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Address:

The Guildhall
Frankwell Quay
Shrewsbury
SY3 8HQ

Telephone:

01743 281000

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Plastic bottle recycling

Plastic recycling seems to confuse a lot of people, but it really is simple. We can only recycle plastic bottles. If its plastic and its bottle shaped, we can take it for recycling at the designated bring sites. If it's not bottle shaped, sorry but we do not have access to facilities to recycle it.

By popular demand, the Council is providing bring banks to collect plastic bottles for recycling at a number of sites in the town. The recycling facilities are provided by the Council at 5 sites in Shrewsbury, Asda on Old Potts Way, Morrisons in Harlescott, Sainsbury's at Meole Brace, Frankwell carpark near the town centre, and by the Spar Shop on Castlefields Precint. In addition these sites are augmented by the Battlefield Household Recycling Centre and the reverse vending machine at the new Tesco eco-store in Sundorne.

All these sites will accept two different types of plastic, Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET / PETE) and High Density Polyethylene (HDPE). Generally speaking these polymers are used for pop and milk bottles. If you have a plastic bottle but are unsure which type of plastic it is, these can be readily identified by checking for the Polymer Identification Code (PID) which is the standard recycling arrows encircling a number. Number 1 represents the polymer PET, and number 2 represents the polymer HDPE. These are the only ones that can currently be accepted for recycling. If you unsure, rest assured, virtually everything bottle shaped will be made from one of these polymers.

In the UK billions of plastic bottles are disposed of each year, almost all of this is land-filled, where in the absence of sunlight they will take literally hundreds and hundreds of years to break down. Now if they are separated from the general waste stream, the Council will instead send the plastic bottles to JFC Delleve Ltd., near Liverpool, where they shredded before being melted down to make new recycled plastic products from garden furniture to drainage pipes.

We ask that for hygeine reasons people rinse out the plastic bottles. Then for ease of storage please squash them. The lids should be removed from the bottle (but they can be included for recycling too) to prevent them expoding when crushed at the reprocessing factory.

Plastic bottle reycling is really important, its saves thousands of barrels of oil being extracted each year and its also much less energy intense than manufacturing virgin plastic, thus it reduces greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming

Some interesting facts:

Nationally 11% of all household waste is plastic, almost half of which is plastic bottles!
Figures from DEFRA show that during 2004, 9.2 billion plastic bottles, worth around £27 million were buried in the ground at a cost of £100 million!
Reprocessor demand for plastics outstrips supply 3 times over!
25 recycled PET bottles can be used to make an adult's fleece jacket!
Plastic packaging accounts for 2% of all global crude oil production!