Banbury, Oxon., UK: With new figures revealing that households in England will create an additional three quarters of a million tonnes of waste over Christmas – including over one billion Christmas cards – Ab Fab star, actress Joanna Lumley OBE, last week teamed up with Recycle Now and the Woodland Trust to give an early festive reminder to recycle.
Actress Joanna Lumley launched Recycle Now’s Christmas Recycling Campaign last week (Photo: Recycle Now)
Joanna said:
“Christmas is a great time for celebrations and being with our families, but we do end up creating more waste. A simple way to help reduce this and help climate change at the same time is to recycle as much as possible and Christmas cards are one of the easiest items to keep out of our bins.”
The Woodland Trust and Recycle Now hope to recycle a record 100 million cards through participating WHSmith, Tesco, TK Maxx and Marks & Spencer stores to help the Trust plant 24,000 trees. Last year 93 million cards were collected to enable the charity to plant 22,000 trees – or a forest the size of 44 football pitches which is pretty impressive!
Fridey Cordingley, Head of Recycle Now said:
“The amount of extra rubbish produced over Christmas is staggering but there are lots of easy ways to help cut this down. Recycling is an easy way to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and help tackle climate. The extra waste we create at Christmas produces 1.4 million tonnes of CO2 - the same as producing enough energy as that required to enable all the households in Leeds and Doncaster to watch TV for a year.”
To help consumers to enjoy a green Christmas, Recycle Now has included lots of tips and advice on its website www.recyclenow.com, including a postcode locator to find out details of local recycling services.