Recycling old catalogues - ban Yellow Pages!

8.59.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 23rd Jul 2008

Trevor with a car-full of yellow pages from Broughton Gifford

West Wiltshire residents are being asked to recycle old catalogues through their black box. The call comes as retail chain Argos releases its new catalogue on 26 July.

The kerbside black box recycling service, collects all unwanted catalogues as well as newspapers, junk mail, magazines and printer paper. Paper recycled in West Wiltshire is washed, pulped, pressed and dried into giant rolls of new quality newsprint paper.

A spokesman for Argos said: "Argos is continuing to encourage its customers to recycle their old catalogue and is seeking the support of local authorities.

"The Argos catalogue is 100% recyclable, made from paper sourced from known and legal forests and uses paper mills that meet international environmental standards. The new catalogue will feature the recycle logo on its spine."

Linda Conley, District Council portfolio holder, said: "Over 36 million catalogues are in circulation each year. If we all recycle our unwanted catalogues we can make a real difference.

"The black box service makes it easy to put old paper to good use, yet about a third of our paper is still going to landfill rather than being recycled."

Old catalogues and telephone directories can be recycled using the black box service. The exceptions are those with a hard-backed cover and the Yellow Pages directories. The website www.recycleforwiltshire.com provides residents with information on all types of rubbish that can be recycled using the black box, including a useful calendar to check collection dates.

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A total of 117 yellow pages were collected from Broughton Gifford last October, and taken for recycling. This represents a quarter of a tonne of material diverted from potential landfill to recycling, so thanks to everyone involved.

and in they go

LibDem press release:

"How not to recycle Yellow Pages - Council approach is pathetic, say LibDems.

Asking people to drive their old yellow pages to one of three recycling centres in West Wiltshire is a pathetic way of dealing with a major problem, according to West Wiltshire LibDems. Since the council refuses to take them with the black boxes most of them will probably end up in landfill, at a time when we're trying very hard to reduce the amount of bio-degradable waste going into landfill sites.

"If one copy weighs 2 kilos that's about 500 to a tonne. We have about 50,000 households so that makes 100tonnes. Landfill tax at £24 per tonne means the cost of landfilling our yellow pages would be £2400, irrespective of other costs and ignoring the environmental impact," said group leader Trevor Carbin. "It wouldn't be too difficult to come up with ways of getting a decent amount of these into recycling rather than the derisory quantities we're likely to get at the Household Recycling Centres." "