STEPHEN LEWIS checks out ways that you can "buy recycled"

YORK is finally getting its act together on recycling. In addition to the bottle, paper and can banks scattered around the city, a kerbside recycling scheme, in which re-usable rubbish will be picked up outside people's homes, is at last being rolled out more widely across the city.

By October, officials reckon, almost a quarter of all the homes in the city will be on a kerbside recycling route.

But what happens to all those cans, bottles, newspapers and old clothes that we so carefully sort out from the rest of our rubbish? They're turned into new products, of course - meaning we reduce the need for chopping down more trees and mining more scarce metals.

It's not just bottles, loo roll and newspapers that are made from recycled materials, either. Environmental experts say buying recycled products is one way we can help reduce the mountain of household rubbish buried in landfill sites in the UK each year - and the good news is you can now buy virtually anything you want that is made from recycled materials. Toys for the kids? No problem. Warm fleeces for those cold winter evenings? Easy. Bio-degradable coffins? Well, yes, if that's what you're into.

You probably shouldn't expect to get all of these things down at your local supermarket or High Street store, however.

Retailers are beginning to get their act together when it comes to selling recycled goods insists Gareth Morton of Rethink Rubbish, the national umbrella campaign that brings together retailers and local authorities like York's to encourage people to reduce their rubbish and recycle more.

"It is easier than ever before to buy recycled goods, with supermarkets stocking recycled versions of many everyday household items including bin bags, kitchen roll and toilet paper," he says.

"Twelve major UK retailers - including ASDA, B&Q, Boots, Halfords, Safeway, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose - are backing Rethink Rubbish, by helping to raise their customers' awareness of rubbish management, for example by hosting a campaign roadshow, by featuring the issue in their staff and customer magazines and by putting the Rethink Rubbish branding at appropriate points within their stores." Bin bags, kitchen rolls and loo paper are a start - but for the more imaginative products made from recycled materials, you're going to have to look elsewhere. As usual, its the smaller companies, who are creating attractive and high quality gifts and homewares from recycled materials, which are leading the way on innovation.

But how do you find them? The good news is there are a number of websites which now provide comprehensive guides to hundreds of recycled products. Websites such as www.rethinkrubbish.com and www.wastewatch.org.uk.

Log onto the Waste Watch website, click on the UK Recycled Products Guide, and you're away. You can search by product type (toys, furniture, glass), company name (if you know it) or even by region.

Search under toys and you get the likes of Jeff Sloan, who makes Wobbly Wood toys from recycled timber. Try under furniture, and you will find, among many others, West-Yorkshire-based Jarabosky (director one "Mr Michael Douglas") which makes furniture out of recycled railway sleepers. Search by county, meanwhile, and you'll get a host of Yorkshire companies making recycled products, including Jarabosky and Doncaster-based Fellowes, which makes storage boxes out of recycled paper.

Waste Watch spokesman Dagmar Schmidt says the guide aims to be as complete as possible. "You can find everything from rulers made out of recycled cups to fleeces made out of plastic bottles," he says. "You can't see that they're any different from those you'd get in the High Street."

Updated: 09:46 Thursday, June 27, 2002