A bin tagging scheme is to begin in another area of the East Riding next week to encourage residents to keep plastic bags out of their blue recycling bins – and to keep all waste loose.
From next week, East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s bin collection crews will be checking the contents of blue wheelie bins on collection days at around 60,000 households in the Beverley, Haltemprice, Brough, Cottingham and South Cave areas.
If they find any recycling placed in plastic bags inside, they will place orange tags on those blue bins as a polite reminder, stating ‘plastic bags of any colour are not accepted in blue bins’.
On the following collection days, any blue bins found to still include plastic bags will receive another tag and the bins will not be emptied, having to remove the bags and wait for the next collection.
Blue bins without plastic bags with recycling waste kept loose inside won’t be tagged and will be emptied as normal.
This only affects blue bins and not green bins which are used for general waste that can’t be recycled.
The tagging follows the successful roll-out of the scheme in the Bridlington, Driffield, Hornsea, Withernsea and Hedon areas earlier this year.
The scheme is being introduced in stages across East Riding throughout this year.
The council has had to introduce the scheme because recycling placed inside plastic bags is becoming a growing issue and causes major problems in the recycling process, because:
- the bags can’t be opened at recycling plants,
- the waste inside can’t be separated or recycled,
- the bags can damage sorting machines,
- bin crews can’t check to make sure the correct items are inside bins before emptying.
Leaving items loose can make sorting the waste quicker and more efficient for the recycling plant the council uses. More items can also fit inside wheelie bins when they are loose.
So far, the tagging scheme in the Bridlington, Driffield, Hornsea, Withernsea and Hedon areas has resulted in a fall in the amount of contaminated materials, like plastic bags, being found in blue bins.
The amount of waste being recycled by our recycling plants has also risen, with no loads from those areas being rejected since the tagging began.
This has reduced the cost of waste disposal and ensured that residents’ hard work in recycling hasn’t gone to waste.
Carl Skelton, director of streetscene services at East Riding of Yorkshire Council said: “The use of plastic bags in blue bins is a problem we need to fix, and we’re asking our residents to help us.
“It’s very important to keep items loose in blue bins so we can make sure as much waste gets recycled as possible.
“Residents in the East Riding continue to be some of the best recyclers in the country.
“I’d also like to thank those residents who have responded already to the tagging scheme in their area, this really has made a difference to the quality of materials recycled.”
The waste and recycling team held a similar tagging campaign in 2017 which focused on food waste.
That tagging scheme urged people to empty all food waste into brown bins, not into green bins, and successfully led to more food waste being recycled than ever before.
As a result, brown bin waste increased by 1,600 tonnes – the equivalent weight of more than 14 million apples.
