Recycle at Christmas
Good food, friends, family and… waste. Christmas creates
tonnes of waste, such as wrapping paper, shiny decorations, plastic cups and
cutlery, and flat batteries.
What can and can’t you recycle?
Do recycle:
- Cardboard and paper wrapping
(even if they have sticky tape on them).
- Disposable aluminium baking trays
and foil. Remove food scraps and oil and roll the foil into a ball shape.
- Plastic cups and glasses. Because
these are rigid plastic and 3D (not flat) they can be picked up and sorted into
the plastic recycling area.
- Batteries and fairy lights. These
can be recycled as e-waste – most councils have a system for e-waste recycling
such as dedicated drop-off days.
Don’t recycle:
- Broken glassware and crockery.
They don’t melt at the same temperature as bottle and jar glass.
- Christmas decorations. Tinsel is
particularly problematic in the recycling stations as it gets wrapped around
machinery.
- Tissue paper and napkins. These
may be contaminated with food, but even if not, the fibres are too short to be
used again. They can be dropped in a food and garden organics bin.
- Plastic plates and cutlery. These
are the wrong shape to be sorted by the recycling machines.