Christmas recycling campaign kicks off

Working with national recycling campaign Recycle Now, she spent this morning highlighting the 750,000 tonnes of extra garbage which is produced each year over the festive season, including over one billion Christmas cards. This amounts to an extra five sacks of waste for the average family.

Under the initiative, a nationwide television campaign will encourage householders to recycle their Christmas trees, compost their vegetable peelings and drop off recyclables at supermarkets and recycling centres when they shop. It will also encourage residents to take part in the Woodland Trust's annual Christmas card recycling campaign – which aims to recycle 100 million cards this year.

Fridey Cordingley, head of Recycle Now, said: “The amount of extra rubbish produced over Christmas is staggering but there are lots of different ways to help cut this down. Recycling is an easy way to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and help tackle climate change.

“The extra waste we create at Christmas produces 1.4 million tonnes of CO2 – the same as producing enough energy as that required to enable all the households in Leeds and Doncaster to watch TV for a year,” she added.

Ms Cordingley explained that although Christmas was inevitably a “pressurised” time with regards to waste and recycling services, she believed there should be enough infrastructure to recycle the material if people used their services “sensibly.”

She said: “We are working closely with others in the industry to make sure the waste infrastructure is there and it is improving. For instance, 9/10 people can now access a doorstep collection service. It's about getting people to use the services they have. 41% of people say they let their good intentions lapse over Christmas but this contributes to climate change and recycling is one of the easiest things you can do to help.”

“I think if people are using it sensibly there won't be a problem infrastructure-wise. We know at Christmas things can be particularly pressurised but we also generate extra waste and if people recycle less than normal it's not good at all,” she added.

Campaign

In this year's Woodland Trust's Christmas card scheme, cards will be collected in participating stores of WH Smith, Tesco, TK Maxx and M&S stores before being recycled by the shops' respective waste management contractors – Severnside (Tesco), SCA (WHSmith and TK Maxx) AND GSS (M&S).

Recycling figures will then be reported to the nearest local authorities which will claim recycling credits to pass onto the Woodland Trust. This year, the Trust hopes to grow 24,000 trees with the money.

Speaking at the Christmas recycling campaign launch this morning, Joanna Lumley stressed the huge recycling contribution that Christmas card recycling could make.

She said: “Christmas is a great time for celebrations and being with our families, byt we do end up creating more waste. A simple way to help reduce this and help climate change is to recycle as much as possible and Christmas cards are one of the easiest items to keep out of our bins.”