Residents are being encouraged mark Recycle Week (14 to 20 October) by rescuing five recyclable items from their black bin.

While we are a nation of recyclers – with nine out of 10 people regularly recycling – nearly eight out of 10 of us (79%) put one or more items into the black bag that could have been recycled.  

They include things like yoghurt pots, cans, plastic trays from food packaging, cereal boxes, envelopes, loo rolls and food waste.

The Rescue Me campaign, which is organised nationally by Recycle Now, aims to shine a light on the nation’s recycling habits and galvanise the public into recycling more of the right things more often.

Cllr Julia Huffer, recycling champion for the council, said: “We’ve all done it – popped something into our black bins which really should go inside our green or blue bins.

“To help mark Recycle Week we are challenging residents to be a Rescue Me hero and save five recyclable items from their black bin.”

The timing of Recycle Week also coincides with a recommendation for East Cambridgeshire district councillors to approve a new waste and recycling collection service

If approved at the Full Council meeting on Thursday (17 October) residents could soon be provided with black wheeled bins and a weekly food waste collection in addition to the retention and improvement of a free garden waste and dry recycling service.

The changes are designed to benefit residents and the environment by increasing the district’s recycling rate.

East Cambridgeshire currently has one of the highest recycling rates in the country with nearly 60 per cent of waste being saved from going into landfill.

Our recycling is taken to a local transfer station, where it is bulked up for onward transportation to a pre-processor, who sorts the plastic from the paper, the cans from the glass.

It is then sold to manufacturers to make new products, from parts in airplanes to road surfaces, as well as being made back into cans and paper that we all use.