Doors open on new recycling opportunities

 

 

 

Residents can take these products to both the Stock Road and Leigh Marshes Household Waste

Recycling Centres which are open as follows:

• 1st November - 31st January: 8am till 4pm (closed Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day)
• 1st February - 31st October: 8am - 5pm
• 1st May - 31st August: 8am - 5pm (Tuesdays 8am - 8pm)

All unstained timber can be recycled - including MDF, kitchen cupboards, pallets, off-cuts from

plywood, chipboard, hardwood, softwood and hardboard, scaffold boards, floorboards, joists and doors - even if they are painted with metal fixtures and fittings.

Unfortunately, wood treated with preservatives or long-lasting wood stain treatment, such as railway sleepers, telegraph poles and fence panels and posts cannot be recycled due to the chemicals in the preservative.

Recycling advisors are available on site to advise anyone who needs to check whether certain items can be recycled.

Wood collected at these sites is transported to Tilbury where it is used to create bedding for horses, cows and poultry, wood fibre surfacing material or woodchip for biomass boilers.

Household batteries contain toxic chemicals such as lead, mercury or cadmium, and if these are disposed of in black refuse sacks they end up in landfill, where the chemicals may leak into the ground.

This causes pollution which affects the soil and water and potentially harms human health. It is vital that old batteries are recycled instead.

In addition to Southend-on-Sea Borough Council's recycling facilities, businesses which supply more than a certain amount of portable batteries a year are legally obliged to provide free recycling facilities.

These are also now available at local retailers, and can be identified from the 'Be Positive' sign. Most supermarkets and shops that sell batteries have collection bins for used household batteries.

Councillor Tony Cox, Southend-on-Sea Borough Council's Executive Councillor for Public Protection and Waste, said: 'It is great that we now have battery and wood recycling facilities at the Household Waste Recycling Centres in the Borough.

"This means that residents can now recycle even more of their waste, and with their support we can reach the 60 per cent recycling target by 2015." 

For more information about this media release please call the press desk on 01702-215000 ext 5505 or e-mail media@southend.gov.uk