Around Ealing June 2018 | Page 14

RECYCLING Signs of our times If plastic is thrown away with your rubbish into landfill, it can take up to 500 years to decompose. Other plastic, as you will have seen on the news recently, ends up in the sea and harming ecosystems. There is a simple alternative: Recycle it. P 14 lastic makes up more than 10% of an average household’s waste. Yet, most of it can be recycled. You can also save on waste by reducing how much plastic you buy and also reusing things like plastic bottles before you recycle them. The council is reviewing its own use of any single-use plastics. Councillor Mik Sabiers, cabinet member for environment and highways, said: “National statistics suggest that many families throw away about 40kg of plastic that could have been recycled, every year. Recycling it could make a big di