Recycling returns

Asking parents and staff to save supermarket tokens for computers or vouchers for books might have become second nature by now, but are you recycling the cartridges from your printer, or turning in old mobile phones? Reclaim-it runs a 'Fundraising in the Environment' scheme that is specifically intended for group use and which rewards your collections with cash. Reclaim-it supplies a free collection bin that will hold up to 40 laser toner cartridges and a large number of inkjet cartridges, plus a starter pack with letters to help you publicise the scheme. You will receive up to 7 per cartridge, and up to 20 for each mobile, depending on type, and the money is paid by cheque or BACS within 14 days of receipt of your collection. If you want to use the scheme as part of a recycling project with the children or stress how important this kind of recycling is to parents and staff, it helps to bear in mind that during 2000 over 48 million inkjet cartridges and over 7 million Laser toner cartridges were consumed in the UK. It takes one litre of oil to manufacture 15 inkjet cartridges and 3.3 litres of oil for every Laser toner cartridge. This adds up to 26 million litres of oil to provide the UK with printer cartridges for one year. It has also been calculated that 85 per cent of those cartridges were disposed of after use as part of normal office waste and ended up in landfill sites, contributing millions of tonnes of non-biodegradable plastic and metal waste.