Blog: Remember to recycle your Christmas waste

The festive season results in an estimated three million tonnes of waste across the UK. 

Here are some top tips from Shropshire Council’s waste management team about how to recycle the waste that you may have produced over the Christmas period.

1.  Recycle your Christmas wrapping paper – Each year the UK uses 80 square kilometers of wrapping paper at Christmas.  Most types of wrapping paper can be included with your paper recycling collection.  The only type they don’t accept at the paper mill is the ‘plasticy’ types.  A top tip to check if paper is recyclable is to try the ‘tear test’ – if you cannot tear it it is probably laminated/plasticised and cannot be recycled.  

2. Recycle your Christmas cards – Salopians will have received around 10 million greetings cards this Christmas.  A great idea to reduce waste is to cut up Christmas cards into gift tags for next year and remember you can recycle any cards which can’t be reused with your paper recycling collection service.

3. Get real and recycle your Chistmas tree – You can put real/natural trees out for collection in – or next to – your garden waste collection bin.  They will be collected by the garden waste collection service and sent for composting.

4. Get composting – Think of all the peelings from your Christmas roast potatoes and sprouts, all those extra satsumas , the tea bags from all those extra cuppas served to guests… they can all go on the compost heap instead of ending up in the bin.  It’s really simple to compost at home – visit www.shropshire.getcomposting.com for special offers on home composting products.

5. Have your fairy lights lost their sparkle? Well don’t bin them, recycle them! There are 25 sites in Shropshire where you can recycle small electrical items – something which is often thrown out after Christmas.  

We can recycle anything electrical – if it’s got a battery or a plug you can recycle it.

6. Metal matters – it’s especially important to recycle metal because it saves so much energy.  You can recycle the tin foil from around your turkey and the metal foil mince pie cases and aluminium foil from chocolate, the large sweet tins often given as Christmas gifts, along with your aerosols, clean food tins and aluminium packaging.  Visit www.metalmatters.org.uk for more information.

7. Plastic fantastic – Don’t forget you can recycle all your plastic pots, tubs and trays from your food packaging.  Simply wash and squash and put them in with your plastic bottles for collection.

8. Cardboard packaging can be recycled – we have established 25 dedicated
cardboard recycling sites around the county.  Visit www.recycleforshropshire.com to find your nearest site.  

Why not make a New Year’s resolution you can really stick to this year – recycle more and waste less.