The Highland Council has introduced facilities for plastic bottle recycling at nine Recycling Centres throughout the Highlands.

For the first time plastic bottles marked with either a 1 or a 2 in a small triangle can be recycled at the Centres in Wick, Thurso, Tain, Alness, Dingwall, Inverness, Nairn, Aviemore and Fort William.

Type 1 bottles (PET) are mainly used for fizzy drinks and type 2 (HDPE) are used as milk cartons or for detergents.

The Council urges everyone to try and make sure only bottles marked 1 and 2 are deposited in the banks as other plastics will contaminate the load, this may lead to a need to dispose of the materials rather than recycling them.

Chairman of TECS services, Councillor John Laing welcomed the new service introduced on July 1 giving Highlanders an opportunity to recycle a lot of their plastic waste.

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He said: "In Highland we use around 50 million plastic bottles a year but now everyone has the opportunity to improve their environment. Approximately 25,000 empty plastic bottles weigh a tonne and research shows that by recycling 1 tonne of plastic we are able to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 1.5. Householders across the Highlands have been asking us for some time now to introduce plastic waste recycling so I am sure this new service will be popular.

"The Highland Council has greatly improved the recycling infrastructure throughout Highland over the last few years. The introduction of kerbside recycling to 70% of households and an increase in Recycling Points and Centres have enabled the public to play an enormous part in improving the recycling rate from just a few percent a couple of years ago to just over 30% in the last year. On behalf of the Council I thank everyone for this incredible effort. The introduction of plastic recycling will now give residents the chance to recycle the last major element of the waste that is found in their dustbin."

The Council's waste analysis identified that, while plastic bottles only make up about 2% of the weight of the waste in a wheelie bin, they do take up quite a bit of space.

The average household in the UK use 500 plastic bottles a year most of which are PET or HDPE.

(GK/JM)