Household waste and recycling collections

The council collects paper and card recycling when it's wet. However, we do ask residents to store their recycling in a dry place before collection day if possible, as the recycling potential of paper is higher when it's dry.

Ideally, keep your paper and card recycling box in a sheltered area such as inside your home, under a porch or in a garage until collection day. Place your green box on top of your black box if you can. Cover the box with a plastic bag/sheet, wooden fence panel, or lid, which is suitably weighted - ideally something from your home that is unused, we’d love to hear from anyone that has a particularly creative cover.

Wet paper and card clog together, which is damaging to the automatic sorting equipment at the paper sorting facility and it makes separation of the different types of paper and card more difficult. This can result in the facility using more chemicals to break down the card and paper and result in higher energy costs from the longer sorting process.

Covering the box is good practice, especially on windy days, and the easiest way of doing this is with an old piece of wood, chip board or large tray, suitably weighted down. Placing your paper and cardboard in your box vertically (instead of stacking horizontally/flat) helps too.

For this to be effective, all households would need wheeled bins, which would be a multi-million pound cost with comparatively little saving. In addition, as a round with wheeled bins takes longer there could also be other additional costs including staff and potentially vehicles too. Some residents may have practical constraints of storing wheeled bins.

We cannot collect from wheeled bins as if the bin does not meet the necessary British Standards it can result in health and safety issues for the collection crews. Also, from previous experience, the occasional wheeled bin led to collection difficulties and made the service inefficient. The council is unable to replace any privately owned bins that become damaged through collections.

Collecting paper and card separately generally ensues that the material is clean and free from contamination. As a result, the value of the paper and card is higher than if it is collected with other materials such as glass bottles and cans. We are able to sell the collected material to markets in Europe where it is turned in to higher quality end products.

Yes, please flatten and break the boxes into pieces before placing in your black box and consider helping neighbours that are less able to do this. If you have more than fits in the box leave in a neat, manageable 2ftx3ft bundle next to it. This is because unflattened cardboard boxes quickly fill up our collection lorry and once full the lorry must travel to the waste depot to get emptied before returning to collect. This reduces the efficiency of our collection service and increases the vehicle emissions associated with managing waste. If cardboard boxes are not flattened, broken down or there is a significant volume, our collection crews will not take them.

If you need another black box for your paper and card please request one. Please don't use black bags instead of a black box, as we might mistake your recycling for rubbish.