Crying over split milk?

Nicky Stocks

17 May 2011

What do a pair of star-crossed milk bottles have to do with reducing rubbish?

People across the country and around the world have been watching our new short film - A love story in milk - in droves. Many of them have told us that they loved it but made them cry - mostly the boys, of course.

We're thrilled that it's touched so many people. And we're keen to explain why we (with the help of the brilliantly talented film makers at Catsnake) decided to bring rubbish to life in this subtly brutal way.

While the UK's recycling has gone from strength to strength in the past 10 years, we still have a long way to go to stop our rubbish trashing the planet:

A third of all food bought - worth £10 billion a year in Britain - ends up in household bins. This rots in landfill and releases climate-changing emissions. It also means we're wasting energy producing food that never gets eaten.
Every year the UK buries or burns £650 million worth of materials that could be recycled. Recycling them would save the same emissions as taking 6 million cars off our roads.
Out of 1.7 million tonnes of furniture discarded in London last year, only 10 per cent was reused instead of being landfilled. Wasting and burying all this wood, plastic and textiles costs us yet more energy and emissions.

While these stats may not be quite as moving as our milky tearjerker, they affect all our chances of a happy ending.

So we're campaigning for change. We want better and simpler recycling services and products that are built to last. And we hope that our pint-sized film will help stop the Government bottling it.

Nicky Stocks, Communications & Media Team

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