Stroud recycling is top of the league

A new study shows that recycling rates across Gloucestershire as a whole are up with the amount of rubbish being sent to landfill on track to fall this year.

But householders in the Five Valleys are the best at filling their boxes and bins and have halved the amount being sent to the tip.

Simon Pickering, chairman of Stroud District Council’s environment committee, said the figures made the district one of the top performing in the UK and even Europe.

“Stroud residents are doing a brilliant job embracing the three Rs - reduce, reuse and recycle,” said Cllr Pickering (Green, Slade).

“And more importantly households are producing less waste overall.

“People living in the Five Valleys generate only 228kg of residue waste per household a year.

“That is half the average amount that households across county are producing – which means that we’re performing better than most other areas in the UK and we are heading towards the top of the league in Europe.”

Cllr Pickering said that Stroud residents are doing a brilliant job embracing the three Rs - reduce, reuse and recycle

The figures are from detailed analysis by the Gloucestershire Joint Waste Committee.

Household recycling rates have doubled in the district since the new recycling scheme started.

For those looking to boost Stroud’s position even higher on the European recycling league table, the SNJ has put together a brief summary of what should be included for pavement collection.

Every week food bins or caddies are emptied at the kerbside and can include both cooked and raw food, as well as tea bags and coffee grounds, and pet food too.

Food waste that is put into landfill rather than being recycled rots down to produces methane, a greenhouse gas much more harmful than carbon dioxide.

Conversely when food is recycled it is turned into energy and fertilizer.

All other household recycling items should be sorted and put into a green wheelie bin or recycling box, which are conveniently collected from residents’ doorsteps - or pretty close by – once a fortnight.

There is plenty of room in the green wheelie bin for mixed metals, glass jars and bottles, as well as plastic containers such as yoghurt pots and fruit punnets.

The green recycling box houses paper and cardboard, things like junk mail and magazines, or Tetra Pak cartons.

These items are sorted, by hand and machine, before becoming valuable commodities to be used around the world and made into new products.

Households each have a number of differetn containers which are collected at various times for recylcing or to send to landfill

Finally, the grey refuse bin should only be used to throw away non-recyclable waste such as cling film and bubble wrap, nappies, sanitary products and vacuum cleaner dust.

Additionally builders’ waste, garden waste or clinical waste must be disposed of properly and cannot be put with kerbside rubbish.

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