New figures from SITA UK have shown that the state of the art household waste recycling centre HWRC at North Seaton has proved so popular with local residents that the amount of material being recycled has gone up by 25 per cent.
The increase shows how popular the site is compared to the old HWRC at Ellington, which is now closed.
The new North Seaton facility has made it easier for residents in and around south east Northumberland to recycle as much of their waste as possible.
It has been built on a brownfield site on Castle Island Way on the North Seaton Industrial Estate, just to the north of the River Wansbeck in the town. It is a fully enclosed site, with most skips being housed under cover to minimise the impact of the development.
This also allows people to use the facility easily all year round, in all weather. The centre features a split level layout so users can easily deposit materials in the skips and it includes disabled access facilities.
It provides easy access to a range of recycling points for materials including glass, paper, batteries, wood, garden waste and household electrical goods such as fridges, TVs and toasters.
Almost 4,000 tonnes of material was either recycled or recovered at the North Seaton HWRC between April and December last year, showing how popular the site is with local residents. This means that nearly 63% of the waste delivered to the site by residents was reused, recycled or composted.
The biggest increases came in the amounts of garden waste, glass and cardboard being recycled at the site.
During the last 18 months Northumberland County Council and SITA UK have been working on an extensive improvement programme to modernise recycling facilities across the county, which will see just eight per cent of the country's waste sent to landfill by 2012 as part of a 28-year Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract.
Cllr Alan Thompson, Executive Member for Environment for Northumberland County Council, said: "I'd like to thank the residents of south east Northumberland for playing their part in making this new recycling centre such a success. We're looking to maximise recycling right across the county and its great to see such positive results here. This is a great facility and I'd encourage all local residents to use it as much as possible."
Richard Hinchcliffe, General Manger for SITA UK in Northumberland, said: "What's really pleasing is that these figures back up the comments and feedback from people using the centre about how much they enjoy coming here and how pleased they are the with the standard of the facilities and the help they get from the staff."
The figures compare performance over the same nine-month period at the different sites in 2007 and 2008.