Recycling of Plastic

[Mr-H]

The local supermarkets have skips for the recycling of plastic bottles, cardboard, bottles etc. My local council has a doorstep collection of paper, glass and tin. However, the recycling location (also council owned) has recently said that all plastic other than bottles is to go into household and then into landfill. Is there anything wrong in chucking all of the plastic packaging which bears the recycling (Triangle) mark into the plastic bottle skips? Why can't these be recycled? Is it (once again) simply down to costs?

[Nosha123]

if its one thing i have never quite grasped... its what plastic can or cannot be recycled...

I hope you get your answer!!!

[4getmenot]

in my area the black bin (recycle) takes plastic bottles (coke, shampoo etc) paper, card, tins, cans. I have to take bottles to bottle bank

[LoftyLottie]

It's down to the machinery at the recycling plant. Most plastics can be recycled, but if the machinery isn't there to recycle it then it can't go in the bin. Perhaps councils should get their acts together. We can't recycle properly until recycling centres have the correct machinery.

At the moment it's very half hearted and it doesn't give any encouragement to people to recycle.

[gingejbee]

I suspect this is down to your local authority and money. My recycling bin takes everything that can be recycled including glass and every type of plastic.

[Nosha123]

we cant even leave cardboard out as they wont take it - takes up too much room apparently!!

[Nosha123]

I mean that it takes up too much room on their lorry collecting it! so fills up quickly and they need to empty it more!

[LoftyLottie]

I agree gingejbee. Unfortunately, it's so inconsistent from authority to authority. We can only put certain things in recycling, if we want to recycle glass we have to do it ourself at the bottle bank. Because we personally use very few tin cans and few plastic bottles and burn our paper our recycling bin has hardly anything in it. We have to take the plastic tops off bottles and put them in normal rubbish, and cant recycle yoghurt pots or other plastic things which are clearly marked as recyclable. There is no incentive to recycle if you know things are going straight into landfill.

[mrs_nordling]

Check with your local authority what resin identification codes they will accept for re-cycling, they should accept Unicode U+2673 a number 1 in a clockwise arrowed triangle which are also identified PETE or PET.