Member Article

Recycling tips for a greener Christmas

J&B Recycling will sort through thousands of tonnes of Christmas cards, wrapping paper and packaging as people and businesses throw out their festive waste.

In addition, more food waste and electrical items will be disposed of at Christmas than at any other time of the year. It all adds up to a busy few weeks for companies such as J & B Recycling which handles more than 100,000 tonnes of waste a year from domestic and commercial customers.

There are the additional Christmas cards, wrapping paper and packaging, all of which has to be carefully sorted to ensure it can be recycled and reused. But it’s not just people at home, commercial waste increases at Christmas too, particularly from bars and restaurants with all of the extra bottles and cans that they recycle.

J&B Recycling – which manages 68 recycling bring sites across Teesside – has asked people to rethink their recycling by sorting as much of their waste as possible. The company offers the following advice on what can and cannot be recycled at Christmas:

• Wrapping paper – metallic or plastic wrapping paper cannot go into your recycling container; it needs to go with the general waste. Only ‘paper’ gift wrap can be recycled.
• Christmas cards – these are fine to go in your recycling container, but not if they have any glitter on them as this harms the recycling process.
• Christmas trees – if you can cut up your Christmas tree after the holidays, it can go with your garden waste bin if you have one. Otherwise, household waste recycling centres (HWRCs) will accept Christmas trees and some councils have collection points or tree collection days throughout the region.
• Old electrical goods – lots of electrical goods are thrown out at Christmas as people receive new gifts, particularly items such as hair driers, radios and TVs. All electrical items need to be taken to household recycling centres where they can be safely and legally disposed of for recycling.
• Christmas packaging – this needs to be sorted into cardboard and plastics before it can be put into the recycling bin but please remove any plastic inserts from the boxes before doing so. Alternatively, packaging can be taken to HWRCs or bring sites and deposited in the relevant bins.
• Glass bottles, tins and cans – there’s a huge amount of bottles thrown out at Christmas as people enjoy the party season. These can be recycled if you have the appropriate recycling container at home and can also be taken to household recycling centres or bottle and can banks at bring sites.
• Food waste – please empty any unused food out of its packaging and wash the resulting card, plastic, glass etc otherwise it is very unpleasant to recycle or cannot be recycled at all. Household food waste needs to be put into the general waste bin as at present there are no separate food waste collections from households in the North East, however food only collection services do operate for commercial properties. Alternatively some food wastes such as eggshells and vegetable peelings are ideal if you have a compost bin in your garden.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mark Penny .