The Waste Management section of the Ministry of Works and Engineering will be holding their annual "Bermuda Recycle Week" from November 23 to 27. Bermuda Recycle Week provides an opportunity for everyone school age through adult to be rewarded for their recycling efforts.

Primary and Middle schools are invited to participate in the Aluminium Can Drive Competition where winning schools will be selected based on the number of cans collected per student.

All residents may compete in the Curb-Side Contest by simply writing their phone number on their blue recycling bag and placing out on the curb for collection on Thursday in the west end, and Friday in the east end. Prizes will be announced closer to completion time.

The week will end with E-Waste Recycling Day where residents may bring old computers and other electronic waste to Tynes Bay for recycling. All E-waste collected for recycling is sent to the US for shredding and recycling in an EPA certified facility.

Waste Education Officer Vanese Gordon says: "Recycling is an important part of keeping Bermuda's environment and thus its human population clean and healthy. If you're not recycling at home, then you're sending recyclable materials to Tynes Bay where they are incinerated along with other residential garbage to generate electricity.

"Burning cans and bottles detracts from the Tynes Bay Waste to Energy facility's ability to generate power for Bermuda and contributes to costly breakdowns and inefficiencies in the system that all residents end up paying for.

"Think of it like adding cans and bottles to a camp fire — they simply don't burn and can put your fire out. Recycling tin, aluminium and glass (TAG) in Bermuda makes sense not only locally but also globally.

"The environmental cost of mining raw materials to make new cans is the destruction of rivers and marine life in aluminium ore rich countries. Every time you recycle in Bermuda you help the world become a cleaner place — recycling actually saves natural resources."

For further information about Bermuda's recycling programmes email recycle@gov.bm.