Recycling plastic bags and wrapping

Plastic bags and wrapping collection trial
From Wednesday 13 March, we’ll be trialling recycling collections of plastic bags and wrapping! Visit the Recycle Now website to find out more.

Unless you are on the FlexCollect plastic bags and wrapping trial, we cannot accept plastic bags in your recycling. This is due to the problems they can cause in our sorting process.

How plastic bags cause problems:

• Plastic bags containing a mix of steel cans, aluminium cans, and plastic bottles can’t be mechanically separated at our recycling depot. They end up sticking altogether to the steel magnet and the whole bag ends up in the ‘steel’ bay, mixed. This means we have to run the material through the machine again, which adds cost and time to the process.
• Plastic bags and film can snag on belts and other bits of machinery. Breakdowns can be expensive to repair, result in lost working time, and means the material has to go through the machine more than once.
• When the crew try to split plastic carrier bags at the kerbside, the collectors can’t clearly see what’s in the bag. This is a safety issue, can lead to mess on the road and increases contamination issues resulting in poor quality material for resale.
• In fact most people think plastic bags are a blight on their community. So much so that supermarkets in England charge 5p per plastic bag in a national effort to reduce the amount of plastic bags in our communities. We would urge residents who are struggling for capacity to order more recycling containers online.

Where to recycle plastic film and carrier bags:

Most large supermarkets have a carrier bag recycling point - check at your local store. At these recycling points you should be able to recycle the following:

• Carrier bags (except biodegradable or compostable bags)
• Bread bags
• Bubble wrap
• Breakfast cereal liners
• Shrink wrap and ring joiners
• Magazine and newspaper wrappers
• Frozen food bags
• Crisp packets
• Chocolate wrappers

Most supermarkets that do home deliveries will also take away your carrier bags.

What you can do to help

• Ask your local supermarket if they can recycle carrier bags
• Try squeezing and squashing your cans and bottles so you can fit more into your containers
• Please only use plastic bags for recycling textiles and for containing shredded paper in your blue bag.