Recycling Information

Contamination is the reason a load gets rejected, and a rejected load goes to landfill entire — yours and everyone else’s on the round. It is worth two minutes knowing what belongs where.

Yes

Paper and card, flattened. Glass bottles and jars, rinsed. Food and drink cans. Plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays. Aerosols, empty.

No

• Plastic film and bags — including bread bags and the wrap around multipacks. Most supermarkets take these at the front of the shop.
• Textiles. There is a clothing bank by the hall.
• Anything with food still on it. A greasy pizza box contaminates a whole load.
• Batteries and electricals. These cause fires in collection lorries, which is not a theoretical risk — there were four in the county last year.

Rinsing

A rinse, not a wash. Cold water, a shake, done. The point is to remove residue, not to sterilize anything, and running hot water over a jar costs more than the jar is worth.

One contaminated bin on a street can send the entire street’s recycling to landfill. It is a shared bin in every sense that matters.

The things people always ask

Lids stay on plastic bottles and come off glass jars. Shredded paper goes in loose and tends to blow away, so bag it in paper first. Foil is fine if it is clean and scrunched into a ball larger than a golf ball — smaller than that and the sorting machinery misses it.