RECYCLING has become an obsession for café owner Danny O Brien, who is a perfect example of what people can do if they put their mind to it. The owner of Knebworth Village Café, in Station Road, Knebworth, recycles so much of his waste that he is often ju

RECYCLING has become an obsession for café owner Danny O'Brien, who is a perfect example of what people can do if they put their mind to it.

The owner of Knebworth Village Café, in Station Road, Knebworth, recycles so much of his waste that he is often just left with a small amount of food which he offers to nearby farms.

Mr O'Brien, 44, got the idea when speaking to a man called Mark Williams, a supporter of recycling who had a chat with Mr O'Brien one day when visiting his café.

Mr O'Brien said: "We started talking about it and I thought that I could cut down most of what I throw away.

"I have reduced my rubbish by 75 per cent. I have four wheelie bins out back and only need to use one these days.

"I have crates which I can put different types of goods into and I have a paper spike which I put all the paper on and I recycle it all.

"I use excess bread to make bread and butter puddings and I use tomatoes to make tomato soup."

There are a number of recycling banks close to Mr O'Brien's café, and he also takes other goods to Stevenage's Household Waste Disposal Centre at Caxton Way on Sunday mornings.

The only item Mr O'Brien has difficulty with recycling is polythene, for which there is nowhere to recycle it at the Caxton Way site.

Instead he went to his local supermarket and asked if they could put it in their polythene recycling bin, which they did.

"The landfill site for Stevenage is going to be full up in a couple of year's time," Mr O'Brien said.

"With council plans to have fortnightly refuse collections I think that the Stevenage recycling centre is going to become overrun with people trying to recycle.

"One piece of advice I would give to people if they wanted to do more would be to have a paper spike. This makes it so much easier to collect paper to be thrown away. It certainly helps me.