A NEW recycling facility is being set up near the St Mary’s Church in Overton, thanks to a donation by the B&Q store in Basingstoke to Sustainable Overton group.

Sustainable Overton thanked the store for the recycling shed and said it is setting up the new Plastic For Charity Recycling facility round to the left of the St Mary’s Church entrance.

The facility will be available to use from April 1.

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The recycling unit will only be for Terracycle items and will not accept general plastic collection.

A spokesperson for Sustainable Overton said: “It’s important to note that this is not a general plastics collection point like the one we were previously able to provide with BEAD [recycling scheme].

“Going forward we will only be able to accept specific Terracycle items within certain Terracycle schemes, such as beauty packaging, biscuit and sweet wrappers, pens, dental products and bread bags. We will distribute our collected items to join other local Terracycle collections, and these are items for which there are defined national and transparent recycling schemes in place, raising money for charity.

“We will also be able to collect mobile phones, inkjet cartridges, postage stamps, corks, bras, and milk bottle tops.”

Residents are being urged to be careful about what they deposit, as Sustainable Overton has not got the resources to sort and process other items.

“This is a totally volunteer-run collection.

"If too many of the wrong items are deposited for recycling (‘wishcycling’), we may be forced to close the scheme all together.

“Remember that other soft plastics can be taken to the soft plastic recycling bin at the Co-op, and hard plastics (tubs and pots) can be taken to Sainsbury’s at Hatch Warren in Basingstoke if you’re going that way anyway. Similarly Tetrapaks are still collected at Tesco Extra in Andover.”

A new recycling guide is available on the Sustainable Overton website sustainableoverton.org.uk.

The group said, whilst it wants to say thank you for the recycling efforts of residents, the ultimate responsibility is to try and help people move towards reducing their plastics rather than recycling.

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The current facilities in Overton where residents buy local and with reduced packaging are Turners for meat, Wilsons for fruits and vegetables, The Bakery for bread and cakes, The Fish Man on Thursdays and Pueblo Pantry refill store at Cafe Pueblo.

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