Do your bit for city by recycling

Leeds City Council has teamed up with industry group MetalMatters and Marks & Spencer to launch the ‘make your metal matter’ campaign.

It aims to raise awareness of the importance of metal packaging recycling, to increase the amount collected from households and reduce the city’s costs for dealing with household waste.

The campaign will include leaflet drops, radio adverts, big screen displays in Millennium Square, signage on recycling vehicles, roadshows and a recycling competition with prizes from Marks & Spencer.

Coun Lucinda Yeadon, deputy leader and executive member for environment and sustainability, said: “We are calling on local residents to make their metals matter and help increase Leeds’ recycling performance. Recycling metal is good for the environment by reducing CO2 emissions and helps reduce the costs of dealing with city’s waste. Households in Leeds are recycling just under half of their everyday metal packaging like drinks cans, tins and foil.

“Every can recycled saves enough energy to run a TV for four hours, so a small action like putting your empty bean tin into your green recycling bin can make a big difference.”

Recycling all the metal packaging used in Leeds each year would save around 9,400 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent to taking over 2,000 cars off city streets for 12 months.

There will be a series of roadshows across the city from March to May.

The next two roadshows are at The White Rose centre in Leeds on Monday and at ASDA Pudsey from 10am to 4pm on March 23. Visit www.leeds.gov.uk/metal for more information.