Changes to Your Collection
Because of the Bank Holidays over the Christmas week, there may be changes to when your waste and recycling is collected. Check on your Council’s website for any potential changes or consult your collection calendar.
Check what you can recycle
It is important to check what you can recycle at home through your Council’s websites. Don’t just go by what is on the packaging!
You can also use the Recycle Now look up tool for help on different types of items.
Remember To Recycle …
Mince pie trays
These can be recycled as long as they have no food residue on them. If you are using foil trays to cook your turkey or other dishes, only do so if you can remove all the grease, fats and other food residues.
Christmas crackers
you can recycle the cardboard tube parts of Christmas crackets as long as they aren’t covered in glitter and other embellishments.
Christmas cards
these can be recycled as long as they don’t have any embellishments such as ribbons or glitter (you can tear these parts off before recycling) or any batteries from light-up and musical cards (make sure to recycle the batteries separately).
Wrapping paper (that passes the scrunch test)
Check with your Council first to see if wrapping paper is accepted in the recycling. Some don’t accept it because it is very thin and contain few fibres that can be recycled, is dyed or contains non paper additives like plastics and glitter, and a lot has sticky tape attached to it. If it is accepted, remove any sticky tape and make sure it passes the scrunch test first.
Cardboard boxes
We often have a surge in the cardboard boxes over Christmas due to online shopping. Make sure you flatten and tear these before recycling them to get the most space out of your bin.
Batteries
Doncaster residents can now recycle them at the kerbside. Place them in a clear plastic on top of your blue bin. Find out more about what batteries are accepted in Doncaster here.
For rest of South Yorkshire (Barnsley, Rotherham and Sheffield), you need to recycle your batteries at a battery bank. These can be found at supermarkets and DIY stores. You can also take them to your local Household Waste Recycling Centre. You can also find your nearest battery recycling point using the Recycle Now tool.
From the team here at Waste Less South Yorkshire, we wish you and your families a very happy Christmas and New Year and want to say a huge thank you for all your reducing, reusing and recycling efforts this year! It really does make a huge difference to our planet.