I cannot get hold of anyone at Glasgow City Council, so I thought I would ask the question in general terms to the experts here.
Our blue bins can be used for waste paper (in addition to cardboard, cans, plastic bottles etc). There is conflicting information about whether shredded paper can be placed in the blue bin. I have been told it must not, because it jams up the processing conveyor. I have also been told (by an employee) that it can, because it is paper.
Does anyone know definitively, or able to point me in the right direction?
Each council (or group of councils) have their own rules, which are based on the setup of their processing plant(s).
For Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire they say:
"Blue [Recycling] bin Please put shredded paper in an old envelope or paper bag to prevent it blowing out when the bin is emptied and littering the street. Large quantities can be put in a transparent sack (available in supermarkets)."
I think here (Leics) it can go in our green bin, provided the shredded stuff is packed into a paper bag, so that it doesn't fall through the conveyor screen.
Noting that bin colours are completely uncoordinated - in Cambs 'green' is garden waste, in Glasgow 'green' is the non-recyclable bin!
(I think this was because authorities introduced different coloured bins at different times - eg pre-recycling East Hants first got green wheelie bins for general waste in 1990, maybe because the colour blended better in a leafy street scene. Then when recycling came along they had to pick another colour and chose black as the colour for recycling bins.)
In Cornwall, quote "Place the shredded paper into a tied carrier bag and place in with your paper recycling."
They don't specify what said carrier bag should be made of, but I assume the primary objective is to stop the shreddings blowing around during the collection and transport processes, and when it gets to its destination it is debagged.
The right answer would be for the whole of the UK to have standardised rules on a) bin colours, and b) what can go in each bin.
East Yorkshire's is very customer-friendly and so achieves a higher level of recycling versus landfill. All recycling (apart from food and garden) goes in the same (blue) bin: the customer is not expected to sort and segregate it during the collection period (eg two weeks) which is a *lot* easier.
Hopefully any national standard would be for that sort of scheme rather than a lowest common denominator. If East Yorkshire can do it, everywhere else can.
It's rubbish. I want to throw it away. I don't expect to have to jump through hoops to meet some penny-pinching rules - ie the council accepts the lowest tender which is the one which is least customer-friendly because it uses the customer to sort the recycling.
Similar to the policy adopted by my local council waste collection contractor. However the council have recently indicated while recycling is working well in most areas there are certain areas where there is little recycling. It seems that no matter how simple you make the system some people cannot be bothered to sort anything.
Councils only care about saving money, not recycling. As it happens, shipping tons of mixed wasted abroad to third world countries for “recycling” is cheaper than landfill, so that’s what they do. Very little actual recycling is done in the UK. Once there of course it’s not their problem if it gets bulldozed into the sea.
Don’t assume just because you can put something in a recycling bit and the council collect it that there’s any sort of “joined up thinking” or real desire to save the planet. Councils are just trying to avoid expensive landfill.
"What else can I put in my recycling bins/boxes?" In the paper and cardboard bin/box:
Gift wrap Birthday and Christmas cards Toilet roll and kitchen roll tubes Shredded paper Catalogues and holiday brochures Telephone directories including yellow pages Envelopes (no need to remove the windows)
We are permitted to put shredded paper in our recycling bins, with no mention of bagging it first.
When I visited our local sorting facility, we saw the trommel screen which removed all small "contamination" which then went straight to landfill. This would clearly pass any crosscut paper shreddings.
I queried this, and they said that I was correct, but they felt that it was psychologically better to encourage recycling.
What is the "correct" solution for people who want to recycle confidential waste? Shredding is not possible because the shreddings clog up the conveyor (*). I suppose you can compost the shreddings at home as long as you have somewhere to store them so you can feed a small number at a time to accompany the day's veg peelings etc, to keep the mixture ratio correct.
(*) I'm inclined to turn the problem on its head and say "design a system that will allow shredded paper" rather than designing the system first and then saying "this means you can't recycle shredded paper". JFDI - stop making excuses.
If it's recyclable then it's not rubbish. Putting it in the correct bin is a trivial matter.
Round here the supermarkets accept plastic wrappers for recycling, although few people seem to have noticed. You put your crisp packets and similar plastic in a plastic bag (such as your loo rolls come in) and dump that in a container at Tesco or Morrisons (Sainsbury has one too but it's too small so always full).
These days, our black bin (landfill) can go 4 weeks and sometimes 6 before needing to be put out. Everything else is recycled.
In this bit of North Yorkshire (Craven), last time I checked, shredded paper could not be put in the rcycling (blue) bin. However, there is fortunately a household waste recycling centre nearby, and they have a skip for paper and cardboard which will take bagged (in a paper bag/sack) shredded paper.
but note it says nothing about bin colours. Also that 'plastic' doesn't mean tossing in any plastic, it means the following:
" plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET, including amorphous, recycled PET), polypropylene (PP) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE)
pots, tubs and trays made of PET (including amorphous, recycled and crystalline PET), PP (including expanded PP) and polyethylene (PE)
PE and PP plastic tubes larger than 50mm x 50mm
cartons for food, drink and other liquids, including aseptic and chilled cartons
plastic film packaging and plastic bags made of mono-polyethylene (mono-PE), mono-polypropylene (mono-PP) and mixed polyolefins PE and PP, including those metallised through vacuum or vapour deposition (to be included from 31 March 2027) "
The devil will be in the funding requirements since local authorities have no money to spare, so it's only if central government provides enough funding. Otherwise LAs are limited to recycling that waste which they can sell commercially, something which is extremely marginal based on local costs and volatile global prices.
Just to muddy the waters, my council said the strip type shredded paper preserves its long fibres and can be recycled, but the type where its tiny little diamonds or whatever, cannot be as the fibres are cut. What I don't get about this is that, how do you know whichways the fibres run to shred them in the right way? Brian
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