This site is owned by Peterborough City Council and run by a private contractor, Viridor.
The plant was recently re-opened after a £1 million modernisation.
Here are some facts about recycling our rubbish:
- Recycling in Peterborough is at 46 per cent, and the council hope to get it to 65 per cent.
- 34 people work at the MRF.
- If all the aluminium drinks cans sold in the UK were recycled, there would be 14 million fewer full dustbins per year.
- If all of the aluminium cans recycled in the UK in 1998 were laid end to end, they would stretch from Land's End to John O'Groats more than 160 times.
- In the UK, 75 per cent of all drinks cans are made of aluminium.
- Amazingly, recycling it requires only five per cent of the energy it takes to make new aluminium – and produces only five per cent of the CO2 emissions.
- Just one recycled aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television set for three hours.
- Each UK household produces over one tonne of rubbish annually, amounting to about 31 million tonnes for the UK each year
- Every year, the average dustbin contains enough unrealised energy for 500 baths, 3,500 showers or 5,000 hours of television.
- On average every person in the UK throws away their own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks.
- Every eight months the UK produces enough waste to fill Lake Windermere, the largest lake in England.
- In less than two hours the UK produces enough waste to fill the Albert Hall.
- The cost of managing the municipal waste produced in England is about £1.6 billion per year.
National facts and statistics taken from
www.alupro.org.uk, Waste Watch,
www.assure.org, Waste not, Want not; Cabinet Office, 2002 and
www.recyclenow.com.
See also:
How does your recycled rubbish get used? Hannah Gray follows the journey a can makes from rubbish to reusing. Including video of the Materials Recycling Facility. 27 May 2008
The full article contains 358 words and appears in Peterborough ET newspaper.
