I'm a bin man - the recycling mistakes that are raising your council tax bill

For many years, recycling in the UK has been notoriously confusing. While almost nine in 10 (89 per cent) of UK citizens report that they recycle, according to The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), 81 per cent are putting the wrong things in their recycling bins. Only nine per cent feel “very confident” about what can and can’t be recycled.

While the Government has recently implemented simpler recycling rules across England, there is still a lot of uncertainty about exactly what goes in the green (or blue, or brown) bins. And that matters – but not just for the sake of the planet.

“It costs us to sort through and remove non-recyclable materials”, explains North London Waste Authority’s recycling manager, Toye Ogunleye. And that money they’re spending comes directly from us, the taxpayer, he says.

“We spent over £3.5 million just on contaminated waste last year,” he says. That’s not only the cost of sorting, transport, and so on, but also money lost from material that could have been recycled but had to be disposed of because it was contaminated.

Put another way, recycling badly is part of the reason behind your increasing council tax bill.

“We can reduce at least about 30 to 40 per cent of the cost of recycling waste management if we can get recycling right and get good quality materials we can sell on the open market,” he says. “There’s a massive discount that residents can get if we get it right. But if we don’t, then it’s a double cost.”

Some mistakes are more obvious because of the danger they pose, says Gary Oshunrinde, environmental manager for Veolia Camden, but are still prevalent. “Batteries are still mistakenly thrown into recycling bins, where they can cause fires in vehicles and recycling centres. Veolia saw a fire occur at least once a day in its facilities and waste collection vehicles across the UK last year”.

Similarly, vapes and electrical items cannot be put in any household bin, let alone a recycling bin. “The explosions caused by vapes, batteries or electricals are not so much from the item itself,” Toye says, “but from when anything else comes into contact with it or crushes it, which can happen in the lorry itself.” Paint, likewise, is a no-go because of the fumes.

But other more unexpected items ruin a load. Textiles of any kind (fabric, clothes etc) will completely jam up a truck’s machinery. For the same reason, plastic film and clingfilm cannot be disposed of via household recycling. When the machines get tangled, everything grinds to a halt. Similarly, any material that is broken and poses a severe safety hazard, like broken glass, is a no-go in these bins.

Toye says that, aside from the dangerous inclusions, one of the biggest sources of confusion is people assuming that because something is recyclable, it can go out with household recycling. And then there are people who entirely misunderstand labels around recycling.

“Then we often find hard plastic toys, wood [both recyclable but not via household] and, weirdly, used nappies,” Toye adds. “We think that people could be getting confused by the different recycling labels: people may think it means recyclable when really it just means made of recycled materials, etc.”

People confusing what can be recycled at home with what can be recycled full stop results in all sorts of nonsense, Gary adds. “Some of the strangest things I see actually happen on a pretty regular basis. Everyday household items like pots, pans, washing lines and the occasional misplaced engagement ring! But these items can be recycled, just not by putting them in your normal household recycling bin because they can break the machinery.”

Toye’s come across even more extremes: World War II helmets, an almanac from the 1700s, bibles and even guns. “What I find really interesting is there are a lot of criminals who want to recycle their weapons – we get a lot of firearms coming through the recycling.” The eco-conscious criminal then triggers a police investigation before the firearm is shredded for scrap metal.

Both Toye and Gary say the problem comes from “wishcycling”: “This is where residents want an item to be recycled so they put it in their green bin and hope that someone is going to deal with it,” Toye says. The irony here is that wishcycling contaminates otherwise good recycling, meaning that everything in your recycling bin, and everything in every recycling bin on your street, could ultimately get sent to be burned. Rather than recycling more, you’re contributing to your council tax bill and wasting valuable materials.

The key, Toye says, is to focus on packaging as that narrows everything down to five items.

“Most of us do our shopping in the major six supermarkets, so most of the recycling we need to do in this country is from what we buy in those markets: mainly packaging. Research done by Wrap found that over 80 per cent of what we bring into our households are recyclable.”

Packaging that’s recyclable falls into these categories: paper, plastics, glass, metals (including foils) and card.

He adds that plastics can be confusing but you don’t need to look at polymers to know what goes where.

“Focus on BPTT: bottles, pots, tubs and trays. Don’t worry about anything outside of that or the four other categories.” As long as you remove any film (for example from a packet of chicken or a yoghurt) and clean it thoroughly, any bottle, pot, tub or tray is good to go.

All other materials outside of that – cling film, ceramics, wood, broken glass, crisp packets, nappies – cannot be recycled through the household bins. However, many can be recycled or reused when taken to a local reuse and recycling centre, which should be within a 20-minute drive. That means metals, wood, ceramics, foils, fabric, books as well as batteries, appliances and garden waste.

He also recommends keeping a separate area for collecting things to go to the tip and only making the trip when you have enough to fill a car. Everything else is household waste.

“And once it’s in the recycling system it really works. Most aluminium comes back into circulation in about six weeks. For the free papers on the TfL, it takes eight days for that paper to come back into print. And the more people are confident that their efforts are working, the more they’re going to engage with it.”