Do you recycle your plastic waste?

We asked residents what they thought about the island’s amenity sites and whether they think it’s important to recycle plastic.

Port St Mary resident Phil Hardisty said: ’We recycle our plastic whenever it builds up. We take it up to the recycling centre beside the Yacht Club, where there are separate bins for shampoo or washing up detergent bottles, or behind the town hall.’

The 32-year-old believes that consumerism plays a large part in creating plastic waste, but that the ’responsibilty’ for cutting down on the unsustainable material chiefly ’lies with the manufacturers’.

’Plastic is used because it’s cheap and viable for organisations to use. As a consumer, you can only continue to recycle it. We need to make more noise about this.’

He added: ’From a cynical point of view, what proof do we have that the island is actually recycling plastic and not getting it burnt at the incinerator? There needs to be more publicity to show that the government is recycling plastic.’

Maureen Hamilton, 75, from Ramsey, said: ’I do recycle and go to the tip quite a lot, but I haven’t noticed a plastic option at the recycling site I go too. We don’t have a kerbside collection in Ramsey, but it would be beneficial to have that there.

’There’s a lot of plastic out in the seas. Why can’t the shops bring back the brown paper bags like they used to?’ she asked.

Visitors from Portsmouth in England, Leslie and Bridget Cripps, have a very interesting system back home.

’We’re given the big green fliptop bins for recycling, which are bigger than the normal waste bins,’ explained Leslie.

’The idea was to cut the normal waste to make sure we recycle it. Everybody’s expected to recycle and it definitely makes you conscious and change your habits.’

Bridget added: ’In the recycling one, if we’ve get a broken electrical appliance one item can be recycled at a time.’

Angus Jolly, 54, from Peel, said: ’I recycle everything, but plastic because there’s no option at the bins in the Peel Shoprite car park. However, glass, paper, tins... all get recycled.

’For my cardboard, I go to Ballacraine, but to go out with just the cardboard is counter-productive.

’It’s coming to the fore more recently about the amount of plastic in the ocean and microfibres leaking through water bottles.

’We need to be recycling it, but recycling bins also need to be more accessible.’

Friends Elizabeth Clague from Onchan and Carisa Skehan from Douglas both recycle glass, cardboard and plastic bottles. Carisa uses the kerbside service and Elizabeth drops her recyclables into an amenity bin.

Carisa added: ’If we didn’t have the kerbside we’d still do the recycling. I find I am more conscious of what I put in the bin these days. It does bring it home to you when you’re unwrapping presents. Such as having toys in plastic that you cannot get into.’

Elizabeth said: ’I’m so pleased that they are going to maybe get a deposit, where you can return bottles at shops and get 10p back. Getting the deposits back would encourage people to recycle.’