"Coronation Street is committed to portraying real life and the issues currently affecting society as a whole, therefore we felt it important to introduce recycling facilities to the Street"
David Croft, Director of Regional Sales and Managing Director, Yorkshire Television
Banbury, Oxon, England: Recycle Now, the national recycling campaign for England, and ITV’s flagship soap, Coronation Street have joined forces to give recycling its debut performance with the introduction of community and street recycling bins onto the set of Britain’s longest running TV soap opera.
The Recycle Now branding and logo, will feature prominently on the recycling bins as they play their role on the set of the famous Manchester cobbled street.
The programme regularly attracts audience figures of over ten million and tonight promises to break records as Vera Duckworth (Liz Dawn) is spectacularly killed off – Liz is leaving the programme due to ill health.
To highlight the growing importance surrounding the issues of recycling and the reduction of household waste, viewers will see the recycling bins on set including a green-wheeled bin for individual households in the terraced backyards, an industrial recycling bin for cardboard and paper outside the ‘Underworld’ factory, and community recycling banks for food and drinks cans, clear glass bottles and jars and magazines and newspapers outside the Medical Centre.
Coronation Street’s, Samia Smith cuddling up to a rather dashing green wheeled bin outside the Rover’s Return
Straight PLC, a Leeds based recycling container company, provided the individual and factory recycling bins, and LINPAC Environmental, a plastics company based in Wiltshire, produced the community recycling banks.
Samia Smith who plays Maria Sutherland officially launched the Street’s recycling initiative last week with a photoshoot of the recycling bins on set. Samia is a keen recycler who helped launch the Recycle Now and Woodland Trust Christmas Card Recycling Scheme in 2005.
Fridey Cordingley, Head of Recycle Now said:
“The introduction of the bins onto the set of Coronation Street is a massive achievement for Recycle Now and with nine out of 10 homes now having doorstep collection services the Street more accurately reflects recycling schemes across the country. Coronation Street is one of the UK’s most popular TV programmes and the inclusion of the recycling bins will hopefully encourage viewers into wanting to recycle more.
“Recycling is a really simple way for everyone to make a positive contribution towards tackling climate change with recycling in the UK currently equivalent to taking 5 million cars off the road.”
David Croft, Director of Regional Sales and Managing Director, Yorkshire Television said:
“Coronation Street is committed to portraying real life and the issues currently affecting society as a whole, therefore we felt it important to introduce recycling facilities to the Street. We have also broached the subject of being more environmentally aware through recent storylines with character, Roy Cropper (played by David Nielsen) who undertook recycling in his café, Roy’s Rolls. We hope this will encourage the public to do the same and get on board with Recycle Now to recycle more.”
Further information
For more information on recycling or to find out details about your local recycling services, visit www.recyclenow.com
Recycle Now
Launched by Sir Matthew Pinsent in September 2004, Recycle Now is the multi-media national recycling campaign for England, implemented and managed by WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) on behalf of Government. The aim of the campaign is to encourage more people to recycle more stuff, more often.
WRAP
WRAP works in partnership to encourage and enable businesses and consumers to be more efficient in their use of materials and recycle more things more often. This helps to minimize landfill, reduce carbon emissions and improve our environment.
Established as a not-for-profit company in 2000, WRAP is backed by Government funding from Defra and the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Working in seven key areas (Construction, Retail, Manufacturing, Organics, Business Growth, Behavioural Change, and Local Authority Support), WRAP’s work focuses on market development and support to drive forward recycling and materials resource efficiency within these sectors, as well as wider communications and awareness activities including the multi-media.