03 September 2010Residents of the District are being urged to continue their recycling habits as part of Recycle Week 2009 next week.
The theme for National Recycle Week 2009, which runs from 22 June to 28 June, is ‘Let’s waste less’, and concentrates on encouraging people to put their unwanted clothes and shoes in textile recycling banks rather than their rubbish bags.
Local residents currently recycle over 200 tonnes of clothing and unwanted textiles a year at recycling centres situated across the District.
The clothing is collected by charity organisations, the Salvation Army, Greenworld Recycling, Scope, and Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development (TRAID), and sorted into categories. Light summer clothing is sent to Africa and heavier clothing is sent to Eastern Europe. Any left over textiles are recycled and used to produce items such as mattresses and car padding.
Twenty-five of the Council’s recycling sites accept clothing and textiles for recycling and a further 12 sites can take unwanted shoes.
Cllr Avril Hunter, the Council's Cabinet member with responsibility for recycling, says: "Residents using our recycling banks for clothing are not just getting rid of unwanted items and benefiting local communities, but they are also helping the environment by reducing the amount the Council has to send to landfill. As long as any clothes brought along to the recycling banks are clean and in one piece then they can be recycled and put to good use to help others.”
In the UK around 1,865,000 tonnes of new clothes are bought each year, but only 324,000 tonnes is recycled, around 16%. If everyone put two items of clothing a month in a clothes recycling bank that figure could be doubled, and the impact on the environment would be reduced.
Making just one T-shirt uses 800 litres of water! And ten times more energy is needed to make one tonne of textiles than one tonne of glass.
National Recycle Week runs between June 22 to 28 and gives an annual focus to the importance of recycling and using our resources more efficiently.
For more information on Sevenoaks District Council’s recycling services, including a list of recycling sites in the District, visit the recycling section of the Council’s website, e-mail information@sevenoaks.gov.uk or call 01732 227000.
