Council Joins Recycle Week Initiative Which Really Makes a Difference
Recycle Week is the nation’s biggest annual celebration of recycling and Newry Mourne and Down District Council is delighted to be part of it.
Delivered by Recycle Now, the initiative runs from Monday 14th September to Sunday 20 September and shows people how their recycling truly makes a difference and that it’s worth doing properly.
Each year, billions of items that could be recycled are put in the wrong bins around the UK and each one that is recycled correctly helps save energy and keeps valuable materials in circulation to be used again and again.
Recycle Week campaign stars a cast of recyclable characters, whose stories show how valuable they are, and why they’re worth rescuing from the rubbish.
The lineup includes:
- Shampers the shampoo bottle – who can be recycled into a plastic garden chair
- Spritz the perfume bottle – who could come back as a champagne bottle
- Rolly the toilet roll tube – who can be turned into a notebook
- Deo the aerosol – who could become part of a bike
- Trigger the cleaning spray bottle – who can be recycled again into a new spray bottle
- Yogi the yoghurt pot – who can come back as another yoghurt pot
- Ally the kitchen foil – who can be recycled into part of a car engine
Newry Mourne and Down District Council Chairperson, Councillor Glyn Hanna said” “I would like to extend a big thank you to all the residents of Newry, Mourne and Down who continue to support our recycling efforts.
“Of course, we are always striving to do better. The “Rescue Your Recyclables” social media campaign highlights seven everyday packaging items that are often missed or placed in the wrong bin.
“All of these items, represented by the fun characters used in the campaign, can be easily recycled in the household blue/green bin.”
Cllr Hanna added: “I strongly encourage all our residents to watch out for the campaign on our social media channels, during Recycle Week, and ensure these items are placed in the blue/green bin so that we can continue together to make our recycling efforts even more impactful”.
Top tips for recycling in your blue/green wheelie bin:
- Put all items clean, dry and loose into your bin.
- Make sure all food and liquid are removed.
- Separate materials where possible. For example, take apart an Easter egg box into plastic, foil and cardboard.
Catherine David, CEO (Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) said: “Recycling is one of the easiest ways we can all help to divert millions of tonnes of waste from landfill and incineration, conserve scarce natural resources and cut carbon emissions.
“Each year millions of shampoo bottles, clean aluminium foil and other recycling are binned when they could be recycled.
“So this Recycle Week we’re asking people to be a hero at home and rescue more recycling. Together with local authorities and communities, we’re making it easier to keep these valuable materials in use and give our recycling a second life.”
To find out more about recycling visit:
www.recyclenow.com/recycle-week-2026
About Recycle Week:
First staged in 2004, Recycle Week is now the UK’s largest national annual recycling campaign. It’s a week where citizens, media, local governments, and brands come together to meet one goal; to galvanise everyone into recycling more of the right things, more often. www.recyclenow.com/recycle-week-2026
About Recycle Now:
For more than twenty years, Recycle Now has encouraged and motivated citizens to recycle more things, more often, from around the home. Using ground-breaking research and behaviour change science, we develop interventions and campaigns to motivate citizens to change their behaviour. Recycle Now is the citizen facing recycling campaign of climate action NGO WRAP.
