Recycling levels rubbished

414m tonnes of waste is produced every year

As Wrexham residents wait to hear whether plans for a £25m incinerator will get the go ahead, calls have been made to improve recycling throughout north east Wales.

Household rubbish is a major issue for local authorities across Britain with around 414 million tonnes of waste being produced in the UK every year.

Recycling statistics:

80,000 tonnes of household waste produced annually in Wrexham

95% of Welsh waste is buried in landfill sites

By 2010, recycling levels will rise to 40%

8% of UK rubbish is recycled

Switzerland recycles 42%

More than 80,000 tonnes of the UK total comes from Wrexham - enough to fill every room in a family home within 12 months.

At present, around 95% of Welsh waste is buried underground in landfill sites with Wales lagging behind the rest of Europe in the recycling league.

Both Wrexham and Denbighshire County Councils are planning to follow the lead of Flintshire's local authority and launch a kerbside recycling scheme.

Flintshire County Council's scheme cost £1.2m to set up and will run for five years, involving 14,000 households in residential areas across the county.

People are being urged to recycle more

The project started in August 2001 and is funded by Flintshire Community Trust and AD Waste Ltd.

Flintshire councillor Kevin Jones said: "The scheme will be closely monitored over its five-year duration, this will enable a meaningful assessment of the effectiveness of kerbside recycling to be undertaken."

Mr Jones believes it will encourage further recycling initiatives.

"It will undoubtedly educate and encourage wider participation in sustainable waste management policies."

There's no question we will be recycling more and more one way or another

Dr Stan Moore, Newi

Dr Stan Moore principal lecturer in Environmental Chemistry and Environmental Management at North East Wales Institute (Newi) in Wrexham explained how the kerbside facility works.

"Any household would have a number of smaller bins in to which they could put newspaper, they could put in glass, tins, and so on and then those bins would be picked up in cycles."

Dr Moore believes teaching is the route to recycling.

"Education is working, maybe not as much as one would hope but its gaining ground, the students here have established an environmental society."

Dr Stan Moore wants more recycling

Environmentalists hope recycling will improve with the introduction of a new EU directive.

This will force the UK Government and the Welsh Assembly to recycle more with huge financial penalties if they fail to meet the targets.

"There's no question we will be recycling more and more one way or another whether it is done on an industrial scale or kerbside," said Dr Moore.

In line with the government's bid to reuse 40% of waste within a decade, recyclers are getting more imaginative about what can be made from the nation's discarded materials.

Keen gardeners can use gravel made from broken coloured glass and that thrown out tins of baked beans could turn up as part of a refrigerator or car door.