A poster campaign at railway stations and bus stops is asking residents to recycle magazines with the slogan: “When you’ve read it, recycle it!” The initiative is being sponsored by Aylesford Newsprint and Project Integra.
Hampshire currently recycles 32,000 tonnes of newspapers and magazines a year, but only 25 per cent of this is magazines and Aylesford requires a minimum 30 per cent magazine content.
Mary Corin, area manager for Aylesford, said: “The mix is important. The problem in Hampshire is that we have a low magazine content, so we want to encourage more people to recycle them.”
She added: “The virgin fibres and clay found in magazine paper play an important part in the recycling and manufacturing of newsprint. We pay a fixed price for paper and magazines, but public perception is a problem. Everybody talks about newspaper recycling but magazine recycling never arises. It is the same paper underneath it has just been printed in a different way. Magazine recycling has not been as heavily sold. We want to redress the balance.”
However, Hampshire County Council has carried out an analysis of household rubbish and found that in some areas magazines are not getting thrown away or being recycled. But Ms Corin said: “Maybe people store a lot of magazines or donate them to their local surgery. We think the magazines are there, we just need to get them. Catalogues and brochures can also be recycled to make up the mix, although many people still think that the glue used in manufacturing them prevents this.”
Hampshire County Council is looking at improving its sorting of co-mingled paper and magazines at its material recovery facilities to ensure that all magazines are recycled.
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