A late Christmas gift- recycle your Christmas cards
January 20th 2009
This Friday, Alan Whitehead MP will help the Woodland Trust create new woods by recycling their Christmas cards at the Tebourba Way Tescos store.
Cards are recycled, throughout January, in bins at WHSmith, Tesco, TK Maxx and Marks & Spencer.
All of the cards collected during the campaign are taken to paper mills where they are recycled into brand new paper products, with money raised helping the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity plant thousands of trees.
Last year 73.6 million cards were recycled which enabled the Woodland Trust plant 17,000 trees in some of its 1,000 UK woods.
Alan said:
"Recycling schemes like this are becoming more and more important- not only to protect our environment, but also to keep our council tax low by reducing the amount of rubbish we send to landfill. Recycling your Christmas cards is like giving a 2nd Christmas present- only this time it’s to the whole community and to future generations.”
Since the scheme was founded 12 years ago more than 600 million cards have been recycled which has enabled the charity to plant 140,000 trees.
For more information log onto www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/cards
What do you think about this story? Email Alan
More information
The Woodland Trust Christmas Card Recycling Scheme
The cards collected in stores are taken to WHSmith, Tesco, TK Maxx and M&S depots, where they are collected by their own recycling agents (Severnside for Tesco, SCA Recycling for WHSmith and TK Maxx, and GSS for M&S). The cards are then graded and taken to recycling plants where they are treated and eventually turned into new products such as tissue paper, photocopy paper or corrugated cardboard.
Recycling Credits
Money is raised through recycling credits. A recycling credit is the value of the saving made by the County Council in NOT having to landfill any household waste that is recycled. The County Council chooses to pay this saving in disposal costs back to any voluntary or community groups that are involved in collecting household waste for recycling (in the case of the CCRS – the Woodland Trust) because they wish to promote recycling in their area.
The value of the credit varies across the different Districts due to differences in disposal costs, and is paid for each tonne of household waste that is recycled. The value of the credit increases each year with RPI (Retail Price Index) and with any increases in Landfill Tax.