Waste management

Message in the bottle ... and a jar

You can now put your glass bottles and glass jars out with your plastic bottles, paper and metal cans at the kerbside for recycling. Medway Council is always striving to offer you an ever-improving recycling service and now due to advancements in technology, you can now recycle glass bottles and jars in your kerbside collection.

A box or bag full of glass bottles and jars will be very heavy for both yourselves and the collection crew. To help spread the weight, mix your glass with your other materials. Don’t worry as it will all be sorted out at the Materials Recycling Facility (MRF). Here, glass is the first material to be removed in the process by a series of vibrating flat sieves. Glass collected via the kerbside scheme will be used in a number of ways: as a substitute for aggregates; in filtration systems; in brick making; and as fibre glass insulation.

Take a virtual tour of a similar MRF (www.veoliaenvironmentalservices.co.uk/greenwich/veolia.html)

If you are concerned about carbon savings, we recommend you still use the bottle banks as this saves the need for sorting, and the glass will be returned to the bottle making industry.

We have introduced the kerbside collection service of glass following lots of requests from members of the public and to make it easier to recycle.

Glass is a fantastic material as it is 100 per cent recyclable forever, if we recycle it.

For more information on glass recycling visit the WRAP website. (www.wrap.org.uk/glass)

If you don't have a blue box, you can contact Medway Council to order one, but remember only one box is allowed per household. You can still get hold of additional blue bags from any of the contact points, libraries or place out additional materials in cardboard boxes or carrier bags.

For more information on recycling, visit the national "recycle now" website (www.recyclenow.com).

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