Did you know you can recycle the following?
Aerosol sprays
Bleach and shampoo bottles
Envelopes (even those with windows)
Juice/milk cartons
Phone Directories
Yoghurt pots.
But you can not recycle:
Pizza boxes (or any other cardboard that has soaked up grease or food)
Crisp packets
Foil
Pencil shavings (or any wood)
Polystyrene
Shredded paper
Wrapping paper
What happens when a recycling bag contains the wrong items?
Bags containing non-recyclable items have to be removed from the recycling process so that they don’t contaminate other items going into the recycling plant’s machines.
Thousands of bags are processed at the plant every day. It would be too time consuming for bags wrongly filled to be re-sorted, especially where the incorrect items have spread all around the bag.
These rejected bags are instead sent to a Waste to Energy plant, where they are used to generate electricity from the heat produced. While this is better for the environment than landfill, it is not as efficient as recycling. It also costs Lambeth more as the bag is processed twice.
How to find out more
View the Council’s Recycling from home – guide
Visit the Western Riverside Waste Authority website for more information of what can be recycled, how and where.
Is there any advice on disposing of packaging foam (e.g. used to pad out packaging for computer monitors, furniture, etc). It is bulky, non-degradable so does not seem like something to put in with the regular rubbish, but it is listed among non-recyclable items.
Hi,
Unfortunately as polystyrene foam (EPS) is not recyclable in Lambeth you will need to break it into pieces to put into your rubbish.
There are some recycling points around the country that can recycle EPS but none are local, however the Work and Play Scrapstore in Tooting does like donations of polystyrene:
http://www.workandplayscrapstore.org.uk/#!donations/component_41229
Hope this helps
The link to Western Riverside Waste Authority is wrong, should be http://www.wrwa.gov.uk/recycle/at-home.aspx
Hi Keiran, sorry about that, thanks for spotting the broken link. It’s fixed now 🙂
We’ve just moved and have loads of boxes and paper etc. the guide above was very useful but what about bubble wrap?
Hi John, we’re glad you found the guide useful.
Unfortunately we can’t recycle bubble wrap, however some charity shops can reuse donated wrap. Alternatively you might want to consider advertising it on Freecycle. https://groups.freecycle.org/group/freecyclelambeth/
It would be great to see information about where the items you don’t want in your recycling bags could be sent to for recycling rather than the implication that they can’t be recycled.
It is great that you point out issue of contaminated bags having to be diverted to Energy from Waste rather than landfill and the extra cost this involves, but I think we have a great need to help people understand that there are more options for recycling than only their council collection bags e.g. supermarkets, school schemes, charity shops etc.
Hi Anna, thank you for your feedback.
You are correct that there are many other ways to recycle a wide range of items, including at charity shops, recycling points on streets and in shops.
Full information about rubbish and recycling in Lambeth can be found at http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/recycling
This includes a useful map of recycling places, where you can search by item type and location. http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/rubbish-and-recycling/recycling/map-of-recycling-centres