Rescue your recycling – Recycle Right and reduce waste

Did you know that, if everyone in the UK recycled an empty aerosol, enough energy would be saved to run a TV in 273,000 homes for a year?

Yet aerosols are one of the UK’s most binned items, together with yoghurt pots, cleaning product bottles with triggers, toilet roll tubes, aftershave and perfume bottles – all of which can be recycled.

Recycle Week (22-28 September) is encouraging everyone to rescue items that can be recycled from ending up in your general rubbish bin.

Recycle more

In Brighton & Hove, we recently expanded the range of items we collect for recycling.

Residents can now put plastic pots, tubs and trays in with their dry mixed recycling.

Items include:

• Plastic pots used for yoghurt, prepared fruit, mini desserts, soup, cosmetics
• Plastic tubs for margarine, chocolate, pasta sauce, ice cream, baked goods such as bite-sized flapjacks, laundry powder
• Plastic trays or bowls such as meat and fish trays, ready meal bowls or trays, snack and salad containers, fruit punnets, containers for fresh or prepared vegetables, cakes and pastries, trays inside boxes of chocolates
• Toothpaste tubes

They can go in either your kerbside recycling or communal recycling (bins with light blue or black lids) alongside plastic bottles, empty aerosols, tins and cans, paper and cardboard.

With pots, tubs and trays, it’s important to remove the plastic film first, as that can’t be recycled and – as with all recycling – put them in the bin clean, dry and loose.

Give food containers a rinse and shake dry before placing them in your household recycling bin or communal recycling.

Any clean plastic film and packaging that we can’t collect can be recycled at supermarkets, along with carrier bags when they are no longer usable.

You can recycle glass bottles and jars (with metal lids on) in your separate glass box or bin, or at a recycling point in the bins with burgundy lids.

Councillor Tim Rowkins, Cabinet member for Net Zero and Environmental Services, said: “We’ve made major progress this year on expanding the range of materials available for recycling, including food waste, which has just started in the east of the city.

“Here in Brighton & Hove, we want to make it easy and convenient for residents to recycle. Nearly 8 out of 10 of us in the UK throw items in the bin that could be recycled*, and in the coming months we’ll be putting in place more improvements to help residents recycle more and recycle right.”

What happens to your recycling?

The recycling we collect in the city is sorted and separated into different materials – such as paper, plastics and metals – at the Hollingdean Materials Recovery Facility. They are then baled and sent to market to be transformed into new products, contributing to a circular economy. Garden and food waste are turned into compost.

Waste that can’t be recycled is used to generate electricity at the Newhaven Energy Recovery Facility, which creates enough energy to power 25,000 homes a year.

Watch our video to see what happens to your recycling and discover more things to rescue from the rubbish bin on our Recycle Right page.

As well as dry, mixed recycling, take these to recycling points across the city:

• Food and drink cartons, gravy tubs and crisp tubes (bins with orange lids)
• Small electricals, including cables, laptops, toasters and kettles (bins with pink lids). Remove batteries where possible and always return them to retailers as they can cause fires. The same goes for vapes. 

Find your nearest recycling point 

Our 2 household waste recycling sites take a wide range of items and are useful for things that can’t be recycled at home or at a recycling point. Find more about what you can take to our recycling sites and where to find them

*Source: WRAP October 2024