During April 2010 Mole Valley District Council will be removing all its bottle banks. According to waste and recycling manager, Steve Strickland, the move is in order to save money, and residents will need to use their green recycling bins. Unfortunately the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), in Randalls Road, Leatherhead, can't separate bottles by colour, so they're crushed and used in construction, rather than being recycled into new bottles.

Glass is 100% recyclable, can be endlessly recycled with no loss in quality and recycling two bottles saves enough energy to boil water for five cups of tea. For every tonne of recycled glass used, 1.2 tonnes of raw materials are preserved, which would otherwise have to be quarried from our landscape. On average, every family in the UK uses around 330 glass bottles and jars each year.

The one benefit from this move is that, with the space created, there's room for collecting items not currently taken in household green bins. Steve hopes that, in partnership with other organisations, additional recycling will be made available.