Witney News - Recycle your drink cartons in your black boxes

Recycle your drink cartons in your black boxes

From April 2011, ‘Tetra Pak’ and other similar drink and food cartons will join the wide range of items that residents in West Oxfordshire can recycle at the kerbside using their black boxes.

It will be the first time that householders will be able to recycle the cartons as part of their weekly recycling collection service run by West Oxfordshire District Council.

Householders have previously been able to recycle the cartons at recycling ‘bring sites’ in the District, but the Council is keen to give residents as many opportunities as possible to recycle and make it as simple as possible for them to do so.

Contractor May Gurney, which was appointed to deliver the Council’s new waste and recycling service introduced in November last year, is now able to collect the cartons.

Bob Lightfoot, the Council’s Environmental Operations Manager, said: “Due to the materials used, it has been difficult in the past for us to integrate the cartons into our recycling collections and we are pleased that the new waste and recycling service has given us the chance to do this.

“We are very grateful to our residents for the fantastic job they have been doing since we introduced the new service in November and hope that people will be pleased to hear that these cartons can now be recycled as part of their weekly service, along with the many other items they are already recycling instead of throwing away.”

In Charlbury, residents have been recycling cartons for the past four years with help from Charlbury Area Waste Action Group (CAWAG), a community action group set up to help local residents reduce, re-use and recycle to reduce the town’s impact on the environment.

Each month, residents have been able to drop off their used Tetra Paks at a collection point at the town’s recycling bring site. These have then been taken by CAWAG to the County Council’s Dean Pit waste and recycling site, where carton recycling is available.

Around 20,000 cartons have been recycled thanks to Charlbury residents and CAWAG.

CAWAG Member Christine Elliott said: “I hope people across the District will use their black boxes for Tetra Pak recycling, but it would also be good if people tried to reduce the amount of cartons – and waste in general – too. Just because something is recyclable, it doesn’t mean you have to use it!”

In addition to weekly black box recycling, residents in West Oxfordshire also have weekly food waste recycling collections and optional, free fortnightly garden waste collections, as well as fortnightly household rubbish collections for items that cannot be recycled.

A wide range of items can be recycled using the weekly black box service, including paper and cardboard, tins and cans, newspapers and magazines, plastic, glass, textiles and shoes. A full list of items that can and cannot be recycled is available at www.westoxon.gov.uk/recyclingA-Z

For more information about waste and recycling in West Oxfordshire, visit www.westoxon.gov.uk/waste or call 01993 861025.