Reasons to recycle

Do you recycle? I do and have taught my children to follow suit.
There are several good reasons to recycle glass, paper, tins, cardboard, plastic and food waste.
First, we reduce the volume of rubbish buried in the ground and left to cause problems for future generations.
Second, it is profligate not to reuse materials that can be recycled at an acceptable cost.
Third, to combat global warming and fourth, to avoid higher council tax bills.
Councils have to pay to send rubbish to landfill, and the charges increased from £32 to £40 a ton in April.
It is cheaper for them to recycle than to send all our rubbish to landfill, not least because recyclable materials can be sold.
Market rates vary but councils can get £50 a ton for newspaper and £450 a ton for aluminium cans.
The main problems arise from people who don’t know how to use the recycling system and those who choose to misuse it.
Putting rubbish in the wrong bins and recycling contaminated materials like paper covered in oil are two of the main issues.
Regular reminders and updates need to be issued by councils. I also believe that stories in the national media about “recycling mountains” hidden elsewhere in the country are exaggerated at best.
Philip Welch