A NEW campaign launched during Recycle Week aims to highlight the average Lancashire home could recycle 50 per cent more if everything is put in the right bin.

Properties in Lancashire produce about 4.2 kilograms of recycling a week, but could potentially recycle another 2.1 kilograms, equivalent to every household saving around another 13 aluminium cans, two wine bottles, four big plastic pop bottles and four newspapers.

Lancashire is aiming to save £4 million by recycling another 50,000 tonnes of a year, adding to the 100,000 tonnes collected at the doorstep, and 50,000 tonnes collected at household waste recycling centres.

County councillor Albert Atkinson, deputy leader for Lancashire County Council with responsibility for waste, said: “Most people are pretty good at recycling, but there’s still a significant proportion of things which could be recycled but are being wasted and going straight to landfill because they’ve been put in the wrong bin.”

Carole Taylor, Pendle Council’s waste and recycling co-ordinator, said: “We want to spread the message about recycling it right and keeping recycled things in use, rather than thrown away.”

She said thanks to local people’s efforts in recycling, cans are reprocessed to make new food and drinks cans and other metal products such as cars, train tracks, bicycle frames, pipes and even ship hulls!

Glass jars and bottles are re-melted to make new glass bottles and jars and smaller pieces are used in the UK aggregates industry, for things such as road surfacing. And most plastic bottles are used to make plastic pipes.