ScottishPower employees had the opportunity to find out how easy and important it is to recycle more items, more often, when the Scottish Government’s interactive recycling bank visited earlier this week.

As part of the Scottish Government’s national recycling campaign, the interactive recycling bank demonstrated to the team at ScottishPower’s office in Cathcart what common household items such as paper, plastic, glass, metal and cardboard can be transformed into through the recycling process.

New figures from Zero Waste Scotland showed that Scotland’s household recycling efforts already save local authorities more than £20 million each year.

The interactive recycling bank is visiting towns and cities across Scotland in February and March, to highlight how easy it is to recycle and raise awareness of the benefits of recycling more. The bank’s sensors detect that material has been deposited and give the user an interesting fact about what their recycling could be transformed into, such as glass returning as loft insulation or plastic bottles becoming fleece jackets.

Alison McKean, senior environment & social policy manager at ScottishPower commented: “At ScottishPower we consistently monitor and analyse our effectiveness and efficiency on reducing office waste for landfill by actively encouraging recycling at all our office locations.”

People across Greater Glasgow can find out more about recycling by visiting the Scottish Government’s recycling roadshows being held in supermarkets and shopping centres across the area. The recycling campaign team and a local waste adviser will be on hand at each event to provide tips on how to recycle more and give details of the recycling collections and facilities available locally.

Shoppers could also take part in a fun Rapid Recycler game which challenges users to recycle as many items as they can in 60 seconds, saving them from landfill.

About Recycling

Recycling can give things another life. For example, recycling can turn:

• Aerosol cans into watches
• Metal cans into cars and bridges
• Old trainers into running tracks
• Plastic bottles into fleece jackets
• Glass bottles and Yellow Pages into loft insulation
• Cardboard boxes into stationery
• Carpet into washing up bowls
• Juice cartons into plasterboard

Did you know?

• It’s easy to recycle – there are 3,000 recycling points across Scotland and the majority of us have kerbside collections
• All newspapers manufactured in the UK are now made from 100% recycled paper
• Recycle your newspaper and it could hit the news stand again in just one week
• Batteries contain valuable materials that can be used again if you recycle them
• There is no limit to how often glass can be recycled – it can come back again and again