Recycling is our bag!

Reporter: Dawn Marsden
Date published: 06 November 2014


BIO-DEGRADABLE bags have helped Oldham council to save more than £282,000 in a year.

The Dual Use Compostable Food Liner Project — the first of its kind in Britain — was launched to stop residents using plastic bags for their food waste.

Last October Oldham’s waste management service asked almost 12,500 local households to buy dual-use compostable liners - at 3p each - from one of 43 stockists across the borough.

The dual-use liners are used to carry shopping home, then reused for disposing of kitchen waste in the household recycling bin.

At the start of the project, 19 per cent of homes in the pliot area used compostable liners and 81 per cent plastic bags. But when the test ended, 96 per cent of homes were using the degradeable liners. Oficers estimate that more than 486,000 of the liners liners will be used each year - meaning a saving of £282,029 on the cost of sending food waste for landfill.

The council is now hoping to extended the project to more homes and hopes to get residents using a million of the special bags a year.

Councillor Barbara Brownridge, Cabinet member for neighbourhoods and co-operatives, said: “Over the next two years the council needs to find £60 million in savings. If we all recycled properly then we could save £5 million a year on landfill costs, which could be used to pay for other services.”