Environment

Recycling

https://www.gloucestershirerecycles.com/reduce/plastics/help-with-recycling/top-tips-when-presenting-plastic-bottles-and-plastic-packaging-for-collection

https://www.recyclenow.com/how-to-recycle/tips-to-help-reduce-contamination

Did you know that contaminated recycling is one of the most common reasons for items being rejected at recycling plants? The easiest and best way to ensure that your waste is recycled is to prepare it well at home; wash, squash and sort!

Contamination is where incorrect or dirty items are included in the recycling and this results in the end materials not being good enough grade to be remade into another product.

Lids on or off?

You may have heard that you need to remove plastic lids from your bottles before placing them in your recycling. Whether you need to remove lids or not depends on which sort of lid you are dealing with and where you live.

For small plastic bottle tops ( for example, a fizzy drinks bottle):

If you live in Cheltenham, Cotwold, Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Stroud all leave the lids on, but if you're in the Forest of Dean please remove lids.

Isn't that just more washing up?

Washing your recycling is important for lots of reasons.

Your recycling will be handled by a person at some point on its recycling journey and removing food residue means this is more hygienic for our hard working waste staff.

Some facilities use technology (including lasers) to sort recycling and dirty items are less likely to be sorted correctly as the machines can't correctly identify the materials.

Dirty items reduce the quality of the products created and may result in the end materials not being a good enough grade to be remade into another product.