Recycling Schemes

Kerbside collection of Recyclable Material utilising existing collection points. Materials are collected on a alternate week basis with collections taking place on the same days that the normal refuse is collected. Materials eligible for collection include paper, plastics and cans. Households have been issued with separate wheeled bins or orange sacks to separate recyclable material from other household waste.

You can now put all types of cardboard into your kerbside recycling collection scheme including pieces of corrugated cardboard.....

• Please tear or cut your corrugated cardboard in to small pieces, no bigger than A4 size which is roughly the size of a magazine, a regular size cereal box or letter. This is to make sure that it does not block or damage equipment at the materials recycling facility where it is sorted.
• Please remove any plastic wrapping, string, polystyrene or thick tape from the cardboard. Staples can be left in.
• Whole boxes or large sheets of cardboard which have not been torn into small pieces or are left next to your recycling container wil not be collected.

If you use orange bags for recycling, these will still state that corrugated cardboard should not go in. Please ignore this. The text on the orange bags is currently being updated.

Did you know......?

• We dispose of 23 million bottles in the UK every day!
• Scientists estimate that it takes 500 years for every plastic bottle in a landfill to decompose.
• Recycling just one plastic bottle can save the same amount of energy required to power one 60-watt light bulb for 6 hours
• 25 plastic fizzy drinks bottles can be recycled into a fleece jacket. They can also be used to make filling for duvets and sleeping bags.
• Household cleaning bottles and milk bottles can be recycled into compost bins, furniture and traffic cones.

Plastic collected in your kerbside recycling scheme is sorted by hand from a conveyor belt at Elstow Materials Recycling Facility.

You can recycle plastic bottles using your kerbside recycling collection. Here's what you need to know:

What Plastics can be recycled :-

• Plastic fizzy drinks and water bottles
• Plastic milk bottles
• Plastic squash bottles
• Plastic fresh juice bottles
• Plastic toiletry bottles - like shampoo and shower gel.
• Plastic cleaning product bottles
• Plastic bottles tops - please crush the bottles and replace the lids as leaving them loose can cause operational problems.

Plastics we cannot accept:-

• Yoghurt pots, margarine tubs etc*
• Plastic/ Polystyrene food trays*
• Thin plastic wrap/packaging*
• Carrier bags* - Many supermarkets now have recycling banks for carrier bags.
• Plant pots* - Some gardening outlets will now take clean plant pots back.
• Glass bottles - please use your local recycling site or Household Waste Recycling Centre.
• * Although these items may have a recycling sign on them they are made from types of plastic which are currently hard to recycle in the UK due to lack of reprocessors.

In addition householders have the opportunity to have Green Waste collected. This service was designed with the weekend gardener in mind and is able to process moderate amounts of green waste and due to the large take up of this service so far we have to limit the amount of bags collected per household to 2.

You will be offered the choice of using re-usable polypropylene sacks to collect your green waste in.

Put your sacks out for collection on the same day as your normal collection day. Please do not overload the sacks as our contractors are not allowed to lift over 10kgs per sack (22lbs) in weight.

Your empty sacks will be returned to you in your green lidded bin, which will have been emptied on the same day. If you do not use a green lidded bin and use orange sacks instead, then you might need to leave a weighted object near the collection point to be placed on the empty sacks to stop them blowing away, it may also help if you write your house number on the sacks.

In addition Mid Beds has Bring Sites spread out across the district to take material not collected by the kerbside scheme. A list of the location of these Bring Sites can be downloaded from this webpage. These locations now accept Mixed Glass in all containers.

If you require any more information on this service please call 08452-304040, or email us at Customer.Services@midbeds.gov.uk

Linked documents:

* Download Location of Bring Sites (application/pdf; 23kb)