CASHING IN ON RECYCLING BOTTLES AND CANS IN BRIGG

There was an unexpected bonus relating to bottles and metal cans taken along to a  special recycling session in Brigg Market Place on Tuesday afternoon (September 4, 2018).
Brigg Blog stuffed a good handful of cans into a dustbin bag as we left home, fed them, one by one, onto  conveyor belts in the side of the high-tech recycling machine and collected printed vouchers for £2.60p which we  expect to be turned into cash, having left our contact details with the organisers.
We had gone along expecting the vouchers to result in points - perhaps to spend in a store or to be put towards the cost of buying goods online.
So the cash payment, accompanying the demonstration of what's called a reverse vending machine, was a bonus.
These machines are popular on continental Europe and this one, we noted,  was pulled by a vehicle with foreign number-plates.
Most of the bottles and cans recycled at the Brigg session had been collected earlier that morning by a team of volunteers in the Woodbine Avenue, Glebe Road and Recreation Ground area of the town.
Coun Jane Kitching and colleague John Colby (pictured above), from this group, looked on in the Market Place as the first items were processed.
With press and video cameras rolling, The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) generated a great deal of valuable publicity for its national recycling initiative.
It is hoped that reverse vending machines will be made available across the UK so householders, rewarded with vouchers, can be given a real incentive to recycle.
Some major retailers have been showing an interest, we gather.
The CPRE has been lobbying the UK government for a decade to get a direct recycling scheme introduced. And in March 2018, the CPRE says, the government announced plans to do so "subject to consultation later this year."
Brigg Blog doubts we'll see an expensive, high-tech reverse vending machine become a permanent fixture in Brigg - certainly not in the short term. But we hope to be proved wrong.
The machine that came to the town centre on Tuesday would not accept any CRUSHED cans, we discovered. We'd stamped on many cans earlier so we could get more into a dustbin bag to be carried to the Market Place.
The cans and bottles recycled by householders during the Market Place session might otherwise have gone into kerbside recycling boxes to be collected next Tuesday.
Looking ahead, the aim is for the government, food producers, shops and local authorities to work together to greatly increase the percentage of bottles and cans that are recycled across the UK.
This is a very worthy initiative and Brigg can feel proud to have been involved in the very early stages.
In reply to a comment made to Brigg Blog by a member of the public about the timing of this event, Brigg's Coun Jane Kitching said the date was fixed four weeks ago. "The RVM is fitting around us, not the other way!" she added.

Brigg's Coun Jane Kitching holding up a voucher issued by the reverse vending machine after litter-picking group colleague John Colby had fed in a batch of cans and bottles collected earlier on Tuesday in the part of the town where they live. Behind here are the openings through which items are placed onto the machine's conveyor belts

Deputy Town Mayor, Coun Brian Parker, right, taking a keen interest.