Nottinghamshire County Council and its waste and recycling partner Veolia are supporting residents in their efforts to recycle right by teaming up with Recycleopedia – developers of the UK’s most detailed recycling search tool.
The new recycling checker, available on the MyNotts app, will ensure that the right decision about which products can go in the recycling bin is always just a tap away.
Recycling in the UK saves 18 million tonnes of CO2 a year – by recycling right we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which lead to climate change. More and more people across Nottinghamshire know that the better we recycle, the more we can all do to combat the effects of climate change.
However, studies show that many people admit to “wishcycling,” which is when they put items in the recycling that they know aren’t accepted locally. The launch of the recycling checker on the My Notts app aims to encourage more people to recycle more of the right things, more often.
According to the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), people who frequently check where their recycling should go, perhaps surprisingly, tend to create more contamination than those who guess. The likely reason is that people are looking for information in the wrong places. What may be recycled in one area of the UK may not be collected for recycling in another, or at least not in the same way.
By joining forces with Recycleopedia, Nottinghamshire County Council and its waste and recycling partner Veolia, hope to provide a one-stop shop of accurate information so all those best intentions actually translate to the best possible outcomes every time.
The recycling checker allows users to search thousands of different products and items, each broken down into their component parts, to help them identify where and how they should be recycled or disposed of.
So many Nottinghamshire residents are already making great use of their standard kerbside collections, but the recycling checker also covers many other ways to recycle items, including “bring sites”, such as bottle and clothing banks and recycling centres, as well as asking whether the item could be reused and donated to a charity shop.
Steve Newman, General Manager for Veolia Nottinghamshire, said:
“With the Local Government Association estimating that contaminated recycling costs councils around £48 million a year, that’s a lot of money to be wasted by people meaning well but not quite hitting the mark.
“With this in mind, it’s great that we now have one location for everyone in Nottinghamshire to find out where different items can be recycled, so people check when they’re not sure rather than guessing.”
If you’re ready to dive straight in and see how Recycleopedia can help your household recycling habits, please visit www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/news-and-media/mynottsapp to download the MyNotts app. It’s also available from the App Store and Google Play.
Or, for more information about recycling in Nottinghamshire, please visit www.veolia.co.uk/nottinghamshire.