Five Simple Steps to Kerbside Recycling

Please find below information from Cotswold District Council about recycling changes.

Please follow ‘five simple steps’ to pre-sort your kerbside recycling
Release date: 21st June 2018

Cotswold District Council is launching a ‘five simple steps’ campaign which asks residents to pre-sort their recyclables before they present them for collection at the kerbside.

At the moment, residents tend to use: a black box for all used paper, magazines, glass items, cans/tins; a white sack for mixed plastic bottles, pots, tubs & trays; and a blue sack for cardboard.

However, the Council is now encouraging people to keep paper and magazines separate from glass items – either within the confines of one black box (if they only have only room for one) or by acquiring a second black box at no cost. To make life easier, residents can now place tins/cans and aerosols into their white sacks with plastics as these can now be separated at the recycling plant.

The ‘five simple steps’ are as follows:

Step 1 – Use one black recycling box for paper and magazines. (If you only have room for one box – put the papers at one end and the glass, jars and bottles at the other).
Step 2 – If you can accommodate a second black recycling box use this for all glass bottles and jars – no broken glass please. (You can order a second box for free if you need one).
Step 3 – You can now use the white recycling sack for tins/cans, aerosols, as well as for  plastic bottles, food trays, yoghurt pots and other types of mixed rigid plastics.
Step 4 – Use the blue recycling sack for corrugated (brown coloured) cardboard or light (grey coloured) card.
Step 5 – Use the green caddy for food waste (or you can also pop your food waste into your garden waste if you subscribe to this service).

Cllr Sue Coakley, CDC Cabinet Member for the Environment, explains the benefits of additional pre-sorting: “We are delighted that so many people across the District are keen recyclers and we want to make sure that all the materials they present can be recycled. This now means that we need their help to do a little more pre-sorting before the items are collected.  Keeping the glass and paper separate means that both materials can be recycled more easily. The ‘five simple steps’ also help to speed up collections, cutting down on disruption to traffic flows caused by Ubico vehicles.”

The Council will be happy to supply a free extra black box on request. “I hope that being able to recycle tins and plastics together will make life easier for residents, but I would ask that they “wash and squash” the items first to make the most of the white sack’s capacity and also to keep it clean,” she added.

To request an extra black box or contact the CDC Waste Team email cdc@cotswold.gov.uk or phone 01285 623123.