Why should I bother to recycle?

Recycling continues to be the best option for dealing with the waste we all throw away. For example, in 2007, some 8.6 million tonnes of paper were recovered in the UK – half of this was recycled by paper mills here and explains why our newspapers are printed on 100% recycled paper. The rest was exported for recycling earning foreign currency for the UK. Sending this paper to landfill would cost around £400m in landfill fees. By recycling this 8.6 million tonnes of paper it also saved the equivalent of over 11 million tonnes of CO2 – the same as taking around 3.6 million cars off the road for a year. So recycling is the best option in financial and environmental terms.Recycling glass is another major achievement. In 2007/08, well over a million tonnes of glass was recycled, saving the equivalent of 340,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions and taking 105,000 cars off the road for that year. And there is potential in the UK to recycle more glass.