Campaign boosts plastic bottle recycling in north Shropshire

Shropshire Council is celebrating the success of an externally-funded recycling campaign which has increased the amount of plastic bottles recycled in the north Shropshire area by almost 10%.   

At the start of 2011 the council was awarded funding from the national Waste and Resource Action Programme (WRAP) to develop and distribute awareness raising materials.  Plastics transformation leaflets were delivered to every household in the former district council area of north Shropshire in March 2011.    

The council worked with a specialist marketing agency Get It Sorted to develop the final designs to produce a plastic transformations leaflet which showed how plastic can be recycled into a wide range of products.    

The final designs will be shared nationally with other councils, so other parts of the UK can copy the successful Shropshire campaign to help improve recycling across the whole country. 

Councillor Mike Owen, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member with responsibility for recycling, said:

“It’s fantastic that yet again Shropshire has been selected nationally to help develop best practice for recycling communications which will be shared across the UK.  I would like to thank WRAP for choosing Shropshire to test this and for funding the project, and the people of north Shropshire who have responded so well by recycling more.   

“It is really satisfying to see a small investment leading to big changes in public behaviour and the gains that this brings in terms of generating more scrap material to feed British industry, as well as savings on waste to landfill.”