To recycle, or not to recycle (and how) - an A-Z guide

Shredded paper belongs with your RECYCLING.

Please Remember: Put shredded paper into a paper bag or envelope to stop it blowing away.

Shrink wrap and ring joiners belong in your REFUSE bin.

Examples: Shrink wrap around multipacks of water bottles and baked bean tins, and plastic rings used to hold multipacks of beer.

Please Remember: Shrink Wrap and Ring Joiners are a soft plastic, and cannot be recycled at the kerbside.

Sweet, biscuit, and chocolate packaging belongs in your REFUSE bin.

Examples: Jelly Tots, McVities biscuits, Kit Kat, Dairy Milk, and Haribo wrappers.

Hints and Tips: These wrappers are a soft plastic, and some major supermarkets now have recycling points for them, so look out for carrier bag collection points and collect it at home to recycle it next time you shop. TerraCycle also collect confectionary packets in some areas, have a look at their website to see if you have a local crisp packet recycling station.

Fact:

• More than 15% of the money we spend on products pays for packaging – most of which goes straight in the bin.
• Plastic rubbish in the British countryside kills thousands of land animals every year.
• 8 million tonnes of the world’s plastics end up in our oceans each year, creating a garbage patch three times the size of France.
• Plastics from items such as carrier bags and bottles that end up in our oceans kill around 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.