Councillor James Baird, Chairman of the Council’s Environmental Services Committee is pictured with Katy Fulton, Operations Manager at the Bryson Recycling facility.

Now plastics from all over your house can be recycled. This includes shampoo, shower gel and cleaning product bottles from your bathroom, yoghurt pots, butter tubs and meat trays from your kitchen. Just remember to empty them, give them a wash and remove any plastic film before placing into your recycling bin or black kerbie box.

Councillor James Baird, Chairman of the Council’s Environmental Services Committee said: “Within the Council area residents are very good at recycling from their homes and the Council hopes that the ability to recycle more household plastics will have multiple benefits.  Not only will the amount of landfill waste in each household be reduced thereby reducing the cost to the Council of processing landfill waste, which in turn will lead to lower rates while benefiting the environment.

“When viewing the Bryson Recycling facility at Mallusk I was delighted to hear that Northern Ireland companies process the materials collected from households to make usable end products.  Cherry Pipes converts the plastic material into pipes for the agricultural, civil engineering and construction industries at their sites in Crumlin, Lurgan and Dungannon.  Therefore each household in the Lisburn and Castlereagh area that recycle their plastic bottles, pots tubs and trays is playing its part in generating money into the local NI economy.

“The companies that process the recycled material have also agreed to donate £1 per tonne collected to Children’s Heartbeat Trust through the Bryson Recycling ‘Recycling Rewards’ initiative for kerbie box collections.  So please help raise money for this very worthwhile charity that supports local children affected by heart disease and their families simply by washing, drying and recycling appropriate household plastics,” concluded Councillor Baird.

For further information on recycling in the Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council area log on to www.lisburncastlereagh.gov.uk, call the Recycling Hotline on 028 9250 9453 or email: recycling@lisburncastlereagh.gov.uk