A NEWBURY mother's petition calling on the government to make children's car seats recyclable is gaining momentum.

Mother of two, Kayleigh Powell, created the petition on Change.org last year asking Prime Minister Boris Johnson to make a baby and child car seat recycling programme for the whole of the UK.

The petition has so far gained 4,090 signatures of the 5,000 target.

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It is a legal requirement that children use a car seat until they are 12 years old or 135cm tall — whichever comes first — according to gov.uk.

The best advice, given by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), is not to buy a second-hand child seat as you cannot be certain of its history.

They explained it may have been involved in an accident and suffered invisible damage.

They are also likely to be older, have suffered more wear and tear and not be designed to current safety standards, say the RoSPA.

Ms Powell explained, despite being encouraged to buy new seats, manufacturers do not offer a clear and accessible recycling programme to the customer which often means car seats end up in landfill.

The waste team manager at West Berkshire council explained: "Like the majority of UK local authorities, we currently don’t collect car seats separately for recycling in West Berkshire.

"This is because they are made of harder-to-recycle rigid/hard plastics for which a viable recycling market does not currently exist in the UK."

They added: "We used to separately collect hard plastics at our household recycling centres in the past but discontinued this because we were having to transport them over long distances to the nearest offtaker at great cost and this was also not good for the environment."

In 2019, Ms Powell was involved in a car accident in which her car and two children's car seats were written off.

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She explained the only option to dispose of the seats was to take them to the tip which she described as an "awful waste".

Now, she is calling on the government for a change in legislation making it law for car seats to be recycled.

Ms Powell's main concern is for her three and five year old children's future.

She said: “I think for my children I worry about the world they are going to grow up in.”

She hopes by the time they grow up, there will be new laws in place to recycle children's car seats.

In an ideal world, she would like to see big retailers take car seats from people and work with recycling companies to dispose of them.

The retailers could also offer discounts to customers who get involved and want to buy a new seat.

She also liked the idea of recycling centres having a specific bay for children's car seats in the future.

The waste team manager at West Berkshire council explained they currently don't have any plans, at this stage, of introducing separate collections for car seats within the District.

They explained: "We believe that this is a producer responsibility matter i.e. it is for the manufacturers of car seats to either provide suitable takeback or recycling schemes for their products at the end-of-life stage, or to provide funding for others e.g. local authorities to do this on their behalf.

"In line with the “polluter pays” principle, the responsibility should be on producers to ensure that they are using more recyclable materials in their manufacturing process, designing products to last longer or for products that cannot be reused, to provide suitable recycling infrastructure.

"To that end, we are happy that the petitioner is asking for this to be addressed at a national level and has addressed her petition to the Government."

To sign the petition, click here.