Disposing face covering and personal protective equipment
- Dispose of them in your green bin
- If you or a member of your household is self isolating you should double bag these items
Find out more information on how to correctly dispose Coronavirus (COVID-19) waste.
Blue bin
| Yes | No |
|---|---|
|
Paper / shredded paper Glass (but not window glass or pyrex) Card and cardboard; from cardboard boxes to plain greetings cards (no glitter etc) & corrugated card Plastic bottles & the lids Clean yoghurt pots Clean margarine or butter tubs Large plastic ice cream tubs Plastic fruit punnets and food trays Clean plastic ready meal trays Plastic washing tablet containers Food and drink cans; please rinse cans first Empty aerosols Cartons, such as juice cartons and milk cartons |
PPE (Face masks, gloves) Food waste Plastic/carrier bags Black bin bags Nappies Polystyrene Plastics, such as; plastic film, DVD / CD cases, coat hangers, children's toys, garden furniture etc. |
Brown bin
| Yes | No |
|---|---|
|
Grass cuttings Leaves Shrubs Weeds and bedding plants Hedge trimmings and prunings less than 2" (50mm) diameter |
Rubble Soil Fruit and veg peelings Food waste Wood |
Green bin
Use the green bin for non-recyclable household rubbish.
We cannot collect items such as rubble/tiles/carpet and other DIY waste including soils/tyres.
If you don't have a green bin and use sacks, you may use up to 4 green sacks per collection.
Frequently asked questions
Why don’t you collect more items for recycling?
Some manufacturers put the recycling logo on their products even though very few places, if any in the UK, can collect and recycle the packaging/product. Our scheme is designed to be as simple as possible for residents, we encourage you to think carefully about what you buy and if there is an alternative product with fully recyclable packaging. Together if we all make these changes it adds up to helping to reduce our impact on the environment.
Where does my recycling go?
We have partnered with Shotton Mill Ltd to process all our blue bin material. This site can sort 60% of all the mixed recycling collected in the UK.
The plant separates our mixed recycling into the following types for recycling:
- News and magazines, mixed paper and cardboard
- Steel and aluminium cans
- HDPE bottles – both natural and coloured – usually drinks bottles
- PET bottles – both natural and coloured – usually milk bottles
- Plastic packaging – yoghurt pots etc
- Glass
Today the site has a capacity to process nearly 200,000 tonnes of recycling per year. It employs almost 130 people who maintain a 24/7 production operation.
Today more than 90% of all outputs from the site remain in the UK with the balance going no further than Europe. In fact, 80% of the outputs from the MRF travel less than 50 miles to their final destination.
Next to the sorting plant is UPMs own paper mill, the paper we collect is then recycled back into newspaper on-site in days.
What happens if you put the wrong items in your bin?
Everybody makes mistakes and we appreciate that but it is really important that we only collect the correct items in the blue bin. If we don’t our processing partner cannot deal with it, it can damage other items meaning they cannot be recycled and ultimately costs us.
We take a pro-active stance on reducing the wrong items in our blue bin scheme [contamination], this is done through stickers on bins, our collection crews rejecting and tagging bins if they have the wrong items in through to visits and ultimately bins are removed if they are not used correctly. This is applied throughout the Borough and protects all residents who do their bit.