Winning the recycling war!
Waste management and recycling can take place on any scale - from local to global. The Welsh Assembly and the Welsh local government councils are encouraging all of us to start recycling at home.
The Welsh Assembly Minister Mrs Jane Davidson said yesterday: “Recycling rates in Wales have increased by more than anywhere else in the UK in the past decade, and this is down in no small part to the fantastic job our local authorities have done.”
Recycling and Waste Management
On November 2nd 2010, The National Assembly for Wales approved to a target of 70 per cent of waste being recycled between 2024-2025. This target has made Wales the first UK nation to set legally-binding recycling targets for local councils to meet.
Jane Davidson said:
“70 per cent recycling makes good economic sense. It means a saving of £38 million, more jobs, lower landfill taxes and fines, and greater opportunities for councils to make money from selling on valuable materials. And it means we will reduce our environmental debt - the damage we are doing to our planet now whose consequences must be faced by our children and grandchildren.”
It is your world in the future so it really pays for you to recycle and encourage older people to do the same!
Classroom activity opportunity
Wales' Zero Waste Strategy 2050
The Government is planning for 2050 now! In June (2010), “the Zero Waste by 2050 in Wales” strategy was launched.
This tells us about the things we must all do if we are to going to meet this target of Wales becoming a high recycling nation by 2025 and a zero waste one planet nation by 2050.
We need to reduce the amount of waste by 1.5 per cent every year until 2050. We must also prevent the waste of materials which have the greatest impact on our ecological footprint (the impact we have on the environment). These materials are:
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Food waste
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Paper and cardboard
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Wood
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Metals
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Plastic
Recycling
To do this we should sort out our rubbish into recyclable and non-recyclable materials.
This is good for our futures as it will:
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Provide more green jobs and increase skills
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Help Wales become more competitive
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Take away the big problem and costs of dumping waste into increasingly rate landfills
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Support our efforts to help with sustainable development and climate change reduction
Why recycle your empty drinks can?
Aluminium is a favourite material for the manufacture of fizzy drink cans. It is produced from bauxite, a clay-like ore found in tropical countries which are rich in aluminium compounds. Mining Bauxite is messy, environmentally damaging and the aluminium refining process uses huge quantities of energy.
So recycling aluminium is really worthwhile because it uses only 5% of the energy needed for bauxite refining. Put it another way, a recycled aluminium drinks can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours. If all the aluminium cans in the UK were recycled there would be 14 million fewer full dustbins going to landfill each year.
