Bin wins

Buttcatchers are capturing the imagination of councils around the UK
Invented to keep cigarette butts and chewing gum off the street, the pod-shaped ‘Smartbin’ has already sold itself to 17 local authorities. Made from recycled engine blocks and drinks cans, it’s designed to fit on bus shelters, wrap around lampposts and generally be on hand at the point where you can’t take your fag with you any longer.

The BigBelly bins www.bigbelly.com on trial across Torbay have solar powered compactors inside. They’ll swallow five times more than regular bins, and won’t need emptying so often. The council’s counting on a tidy saving in the labour, energy and carbon costs of collecting the garbage.

A whole lot more recyclable sandwich and drink packaging might actually get recycled if there were handy places to leave it when you’re out and about. Defra’s Recycle on the Go proposals backed by environmental charity Encams, should encourage more organisations to provide recycling points. Good examples already out there include:

• the City of London’s nine ‘commuter bins’ for newspapers near train stations
• Chester City Council’s ‘green space’ recycling bins at parks, riversides and villages
• the segregated bins at the Eden Project and at Manchester airport, and
• the ‘reverse vending machines’ for plastic bottles and aluminium cans at Basildon’s Eastgate shopping centre.

Read the consultation at www.defra.gov.uk

19 September 2007