A NEW recycling centre has opened with community and environmental benefits.

Following Monday's closure of the Amberswood site the new, under cover, household waste centre opened at Makerfield Way, Higher Ince to sift and segregate houshold waste.

Since the Waste Recycling Group took over the management of Wigan's five civic amenity sites on behalf of Wigan Council in November 2000, the recycling rate has risen tenfold to 40 per cent.

New centre

It is expected that the new centre at Kirkless -- expected to handle more than 20,000 tonnes of waste a year -- will help boost the average recycling rate at the five centres to over 50 per cent and help reduce the borough's dependence on landfill disposal.

The Kirkless centre will be open every day (except Christmas Day and Boxing Day), weekdays 8.00 am - 8.00 pm and Saturdays and Sundays, 9.00 am - 6.00 pm.

Joe Major, Operations Director for Waste Recycling's North Western Division, explained: "We have worked hard to make it much more convenient for people to separate their waste for recycling and recovery and it will all be under cover."

Eventually it will handle over 120,000 tonnes of additional household waste from the Wigan area each year. Organic kitchen waste, metals, glass, plastics, textiles, paper and cardboard will be segregated for recycling from the local household waste stream.

The second phase of the waste strategy is a dedicated composting centre where garden waste will be shredded and blended with the organic kitchen waste recovered to make a granular compost ideal for restoring old landfill and colliery sites.