​Please keep the wrong stuff out of your green bin

In the last six months across the borough of Bury more than 850 tonnes of green bin recycling has been rejected, wasting more than £75,000 - money that could have been spent on other essential services!

Today (Tuesday 29 September) Bury Council and Recycle for Greater Manchester are launching a new campaign that calls on residents to fix this problem by only putting clean paper and clean cardboard in their green recycling bin.

Councillor Alan Quinn, cabinet member for the environment said: “While lots of residents are spot on with what they put in their green bin, far too many people aren’t quite getting it right and the cost of rejected recycling is a serious issue.

“If other items get mixed in with all the paper and cardboard it gets rejected and treated as general rubbish, NOT recycled waste. This then leads to extra costs because general (grey bin) rubbish costs £90 more per tonne to dispose of.”

Bury Council’s waste collection crews have been finding that some green bins contain all sorts of things they shouldn’t do – household rubbish, plastic packaging, unwanted electrical goods, dirty nappies and even sanitary towels.

Cllr Quinn added: “Bins containing the wrong stuff not only spoil whole truckloads of recycling, they also waste everyone’s recycling efforts and large sums of money.

“It’s really simple what we need our residents to do to help us fix this issue - please only put clean paper and clean cardboard in your green bin – nothing else.”

Over the next three weeks information leaflets will be delivered to all households and a sticker will be applied to the lid of all green recycling bins. These communication materials will remind residents of what should and should not go in a green recycling bin.

After this, bin crews will be checking bins and placing red ‘bin alert’ stickers on those bins that continue to contain the wrong items. These bins will not be emptied and the household concerned will need to remove the wrong items for their bin to be emptied on the next scheduled collection day.

Residents can find out more about what goes in which bin and sign up for email reminders and alerts for all their collections at: www.bury.gov.uk/recycling.

For full details of the paper and card campaign see: recycleforgreatermanchester.com/community-post/go-green-bury/

ENDS

Press release issued: 29 September 2020.