why do we recycle?

Each household produces about one tonne of rubbish annually, amounting to about 29.1 million tonnes for the UK each year. That's the same weight of around 4.85 million male African Elephants!

The amount of rubbish we throw away is increasing for a number of reasons:

• new packaging materials and technology are being developed
• lifestyle changes: for example a greater reliance on fast and convenience food
• increasing affluence, leading to greater consumption of goods
• increasing population

Today's rubbish compared to pre-1960s rubbish, contains more products that don't break down when they're put in the ground. Packaging waste makes up about a quarter of all the rubbish you put in your bin. Most of this could be recycled.

We need to increase the amount of rubbish that is recycled, because we cannot carry on burying and burning rubbish forever. This is recognised by the government who are thinking of ways we can reduce the amount of rubbish we produce and increase the amount we reuse and recycle.

However, these changes will not happen overnight. To increase recycling we need to:

• collect more rubbish in recycling bins and on doorsteps ready to be recycled
• build more recycling plants
• educate people about recycling
• make sure there are enough rubbish trucks to collect the recyclable rubbish
• find ways of using the recycled material by making it into useful items. Did you know some fleece jackets are made from recycled plastic bottles?