Recycle this…

Recycling tips for West Sussex

WSCC Recycling Ambassador Colin McFarlin regularly shares his knowledge with the community on the tricky matter of recycling in our domestic blue bins. We, here at Lindfield Life, will be collecting all his invaluable tips and tricks and displaying them here on this handy online guide. We aim to add a new recycling tip every month, so be sure to check back.
All the information collected here was correct at the time it went to press. To check it is still correct please email the editor at editor@lindfieldlife.co.uk.

Important note: All items for recycling should be:

• Clean - free from food and drink leftovers

• Dry - keep your recycling bin lid shut

• Loose - no plastic bags.

Did you know that you now need to book an appointment to visit a recycling centre in West Sussex?

This is to cut down on long queues and give our staff more time to offer help and give you recycling advice. Here are the key points...
- Appointments are available 14 days in advance. www.westsussex.gov.uk/BookToRecycle
- You need to provide the registration number of the vehicle you will be attending the centre in when you book. If you are hiring a vehicle and this is unknown, you will be asked to show the hire paperwork at the centre.
- You need to provide the registration number of the vehicle you will be attending the centre in when you book. If you are hiring a vehicle and this is unknown, you will be asked to show the hire paperwork at the centre.
- Anyone using a Recycling Centre is still required to provide proof of residency in West Sussex. You will still need to show one form of identification.

Bubble wrap and food bags

Cans, tins and packs

Large household waste and white goods

Small electricals

Reducing black bin waste

Which plastic is recyclable plastic?

Till receipts

Paint

Plastic and metal lids - New update Feb 23

General bin etiquette

Unwanted medicines

Plastic flower pots

Clothing and old rags

Metal milk bottle tops

Biodegradable and compostable materials

Aluminium foil

Soft plastic bags and packets

Wrapping paper, glitter and seasonal - Minor update Nov 22

Old computer cables and IT

Light bulbs and florescent lamps

Home coffee pods

Books

Toys

Cosmetic tubes

Toothpaste tubes - New Nov 24

Candle Wax

Food Waste

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Paint

Tins of paint

Take a trip to the Recycling Centre in Burgess Hill, and not only can you drop off all your part used, probably dried up paint, but you can also pick up, free of charge, up to three tins of paint from the site.

When you get checked in at the gate, do tell them you have paint to dump and/or would like to have some free paint. One of the team will open up the locker (kept locked as a fire precaution) for you to choose paint for free. You do not have to hand in paint to obtain free paint. 

Visiting at the end of October (2024), I can tell you that there was all sorts of free paint available - loads of white emulsion.

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Acrylic paint

Acrylic is a form of plastic, so we do need to be aware of how we dispose of it. To reduce anything getting into the water system I have been advised that before you wash out your brushes, you wipe them off first with paper - old newspaper will do - to remove as much paint as possible and put the paper into your black top rubbish bin. This is better than using an old cloth as the cloth cannot be put in your black top bin.

This way, the absolute minimum amount of plastic will enter the water system from your sink when you do wash your brushes! The way our water is processed means that it can cope with these small amounts.

Can you also make sure that any paint left on your palette is also disposed of into your black top bin. When your palette is dry do peel off as much as you can and this can also be wrapped in paper and disposed of into your black top bin.

Regarding the acrylic plastic you put into your black bin, do not despair. In West Sussex, we do recycle your black top bin contents and we extract all the plastic and paper, including your acrylic paint, and we turn it into Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF). These are fuel pellets that are then are sold to industry as industrial fuel.

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Recycling home page

Unwanted medicines

Medicines and health

You can take unused medicines, prescription or otherwise, and empty inhalers back to your local pharmacy, like Boots. Incidentally this applies to all unused medicines, including tablets or liquids. Do not be tempted to flush them down the loo!

Your local chemist, including all Boots pharmacies, are obliged to accept back unwanted medicines from patients.

If you have empty blister packs that contained medical tablets, these can be recycled in your blue top kerbside bin in the same way as all foil containers. Please do check the blister packs are empty.

Boots also take and recycle contact lenses.

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Recycling home page

Plastic and metal lids - Info updated Feb 23

Confusingly, different manufacturers have different instructions on their packaging - some say take lids off and some say leave them on. This is down to different councils have different recycling methods, and some can accept tops left on. (There are 338 collection authorities in England, 32 in London alone!)

RECYCLING UPDATE: Our message has always been to take the tops off plastic containers before recycling. All this changed from 1st September 2022 as we have improved our recycling process. If you live in West Sussex, you can now recycle, in your kerbside recycling bin, plastic bottles, plastic milk bottles, tetra packs and ketchup bottles. Any plastic bottle you did recycle before without the lid, can now be recycled with the plastic lid on. It does not matter what type of plastic the top is made of; we can even accept trigger sprays on plastic bottles.

The rules we have in West Sussex regarding tops is:

METAL BOTTLE TOPS: any colour - can go into your blue top recycling bin, any size from small beer bottle tops to big jar tops.

PLASTIC BOTTLE TOPS: any colour - can go into your blue top recycling bin.

If a lid is discarded in the old way into your black top bin - do not despair! As we extract all the bits of plastic and paper from the black bin and turn it into RDF - Refuse Derived Fuel. These are fuel pellets that are then used in industry in place of fossil fuels! So none of your plastic will end up in landfill from WSCC.

Did you know milk bottle tops are collected by charities?
Many of you collected milk bottle tops for the League of Friends at Princess Royal Hospital. They have stopped collecting and no longer have a bin in the hospital.
Instead, here are some of the places that still collect milk bottle tops. Remember only clean milk bottle tops, any colour. No other tops please.
Lindfield – outside The Stand Up – Terracycle bin, for the benefit of Great Ormond Street Hospital. Haywards Heath Town Council Office, same charity.
Bay Tree Café in Haywards Heath, in the Orchards Shopping Centre.
Cuckfield – Second Saturday of every month at the food market held at the Rose & Crown car park. Hurstpierpoint – Village Centre (Library) – Hurst ReThink collection box support GOSH.
The United Reformed Church - in the center of Hassocks village have a collection box.

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Recycling home page

Soft plastic bags and packets

You can now recycle a lot more soft plastics than crisp packets and stretchy plastic at many supermarket stores (www.shorturl.at/cekFR).

Soft plastics are lightweight plastics that cannot be placed in recycling bins at home. Think plastic film lids on yoghurt pots, soft fruit punnets and ready meals, as well as plastic crisp packets, pasta bags and chocolate or biscuit wrappers.

All major supermarkets are offering this service: Co-op, Tesco, Waitrose, Morrisons and Sainsburys. When you get into the swing of it, you will be taking a carrier bag full of recycling to the supermarket every time you visit!

Additional: Please bear in mind supermarkets do move around their recycling bins, so if you cannot find it do ask in store, and your local store may be different.
Waitrose – At the far end of the store after the checkouts by the café.
Robert Dyas – offers battery recycling by the entrance door.
Boots – On the right as you step inside.
Marks and Spencer – Behind the checkout desks.

WSCC recycling your ‘hard’ plastic (bottles, tubs and trays etc) and the supermarkets accepting your ‘soft’ plastic (bags, packets). All the plastic packaging you get from Supermarkets can now be recycled!

But what happens to it? Soft plastic can now be recycled via physical recycling which turns it into other items such as heavy-duty outdoor plastic furniture and roads; and chemical recycling, which turns it back into oil, that can be used for making new plastic resins for fuel and other purposes. Please also support your local Terracycle collection teams. www.terracycle.com/en-GB/brigades will show you where and what you can recycle, for the benefit of a local charity or school. The Stand Up Inn and Lindfield Primary Academy are prime examples in Lindfield.

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The cereal manufacturers are changing their packaging so the good news is that some liners can be recycled with carrier bags at larger stores.
You will need to look at the cardboard outer, and the recycling instructions on the cardboard outer of individual packets. Some manufacturers, and these include Kelloggs, Nestle and Sainsburys’ own brand are changing the composition of the liner to a recyclable plastic and the instructions on the box have been changed to reflect this, and now tell you that the inner liner can now be ‘recycle with carrier bags at larger stores’. What this means is that these inner wrappers can now be put into the plastic bag recycling bins at most large supermarket stores.

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Please make sure these are all empty and clean so they can be recycled! So now you recycle your soft plastic, that cannot be recycled by WSCC, at your supermarket.

Visit www.recyclenow.com to find your nearest instore flexible plastic collection point.

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Recycling Home

Which plastic is recyclable plastic?

I am often asked ‘What plastic can I recycle in my blue top bin?’

If you remember bottles, tubs and trays you will not go wrong. All of these can be recycled in your blue top bin. Colour is not an issue – any colour, including black. If you can remove the label do so, but if you cannot, our system can, it just saves us a job.

Plastic trays - these are the trays that vary from the trays you find in chocolates and biscuits, very flimsy, right through to the plastic trays food is sold on, more solid and robust. The good news is ALL these plastic trays can be recycled by West Sussex, but it is not the same in other counties across the UK!

Plastic lids - we can recycle plastic lids, but it does depend on size. I usually say jam jar size is a minimum. Smaller lids can go in your black top bin. Milk bottle tops can be given to charity.

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So why is plastic so complicated? There are over 40,000 different types of plastic, all grouped into seven resin codes.

So, there are many types of plastic in each code. Here are my five simple rules to what you can put into your kerbside recycling bin.

1. The symbol you find on plastic is nothing to do with recycling, it is one of the 7 resin codes – ignore it!

2. Is it a plastic bottle, tub, pot or tray from your bathroom or kitchen? (Plant pots are from your garden so cannot go into your recycling bin – B&Q operates a recycling scheme for them, as do some garden centres).

3. We accept any colour and any thickness.

4. Plastic should be clean, dry and loose and with the tops off. Why? The top is often a different plastic to the bottle, and they get mixed up with other recycling streams.

5. If plastic bottle tops are smaller than jam jar lid size – put into rubbish bin or give to a charity that collects bottle tops. Why? In our sorting process, small items of plastic contaminate our sorted glass. Recycling made simple.

RECYCLING UPDATE: Our message has always been to take the tops off plastic containers before recycling. All this changed from 1st September 2022 as we have improved our recycling process. If you live in West Sussex, you can now recycle, in your kerbside recycling bin, plastic bottles, plastic milk bottles, tetra packs and ketchup bottles. Any plastic bottle you did recycle before without the lid, can now be recycled with the plastic lid on. It does not matter what type of plastic the top is made of; we can even accept trigger sprays on plastic bottles.

If still in doubt, do look up online at this address: www.recycleforwestsussex.org and search under A-Z of recycling, or write to me with a picture.

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Recycle home page

Biodegradable and compostable materials

Many organisations have changed their packaging to show a label, as illustrated.

If it has this label, then it is suitable for home composting. However this is the only way to recycle this product as it cannot be recycled with your blue top recycling bin. If you put it into your recycling bin then it will get mixed up with the plastics. In West Sussex, we are able to recycle plastic bottles and containers (pots tubs and trays) but if compostable products find their way into kerbside recycling they end up at our Material Recycling Facility (MRF) as they contaminate the plastics material stream.

And do not put them into your green garden waste bin, if you have one, as this will contaminate the garden waste. The contents of your green top garden waste bin, if you have one, in West Sussex go to produce compost to strict standards set by the British Standards Association, which ensure that the soil produced is certified BSI Standard PAS100 as safe to use and be put back into the land.

Please do not place bioplastic material or food waste into your garden waste bin as this will contaminate the quality of the compost produced and then it cannot be returned to the land and used to produce food.

So if you cannot compost it yourself, or give it to someone with a compost heap, then just place it into your black top rubbish bin.

If the packaging simply says it is compostable, then the same rules apply, apart from the fact that it cannot be composted in a ‘home’ compost heap. This is because your domestic compost heap cannot reach the high temperature required to break it down. It can be composted, but only in an industrial compost process – one that you do not have access to! So they should also be placed in your black top rubbish bin.

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Recycling home

Metal foil milk bottle tops

The foil milk bottle tops from good old fashioned milk bottles can be recycled. This is foil and can go into your blue top kerbside recycling bin.

As they are small, I would suggest you do as I do: As you use them pop them, clean and dry, into a small pot and then with all your other small bits of foil, roll them up into a ball. When the ball gets to the size of a tennis ball pop it into your recycling bin. At this size it will not get mixed up with other recycling and will not block up the mechanical sorting machinery at our recycling plant.

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Recycling home page

Plastic flower pots

Most gardeners will admit to hoarding far too many pots in the garden shed. Unfortunately, garden plastics, for example plant pots, seed trays, tools and furniture, cannot be recycled in your kerbside recycling bin. The reason is that they are often made of a different type of plastic to the plastic used for household bottles, tubs and trays.

So how can you dispose of unwanted plastic plant pots?

• Do ask the retailer you bought your plants from if they will recycle used plastic plant pots.

• You can take plastic plant pots to B&Q stores, as they operate their own recycling scheme. Do you know they have a big recycling container that accepts small electrical items, batteries, light bulbs and florescent tubes too?

• Do offer them for free on social media sites or offer them to your local allotment holders.

• A national plant pot take-back scheme has just been launched by the Horticultural Trade Association (HTA), which will enable its members to send trays and pots for recycling. The HTA (with 1,800 garden centre members across the UK) says will not only enable members to become more sustainable but will also save them money.

You can now take these to Burgess Hill tip, where they can be deposited separately for recycling. - This is currently a trial to ensure that the items can be collected separately and the council will look at the feasibility of rolling it out to other sites in the future.

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Recycling home page

General bin etiquette

Whilst many of us have been in lockdown, we have had an opportunity to declutter rooms, garages, or sheds. Under normal circumstances we would take the clutter to charity shops or to the HWRS (Household Waste Recycling Site), the TIP.

I would ask you not to simply dump all your declutter into your black top kerbside rubbish bin. Declutter is not household waste.

The Household Waste Recycling Site (the Tip)
Did you know that 80% of what you take to the Tip is recycled?

First organise all the rubbish at home for the Tip into different waste streams into boxes, so disposing is easy when he gets there!

Also remember to take your ID to show you are a West Sussex resident.

Your general waste bin

- Try to put as little as possible in this bin – can anything be reused?

- Bag or double bag all food waste.

- Check what can be recycled and put this clean, dry and loose into your recycling bin. Check this site for what can be recycled – more than you think - www.recycleforwestsussex.org

Your recycling bin

We want you to keep recycling, and you will need to get as much as possible in your bin.

- Cut up or rip up cardboard to cereal box size – great stress relief

- Plastics, squash or open out

- Do not leave recycling next to bin. They will not take it as there is a handling risk.

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Recycling home page

Till receipts

Up to about four or so years ago, till receipts were printed on special paper and were not able to be recycled. Remember when till receipts were on shiny paper?

Thanks to the pressure to recycle, supermarkets and other retailers changed to printing on ordinary paper so now all till receipts can be recycled. Also, the smallest supermarket till receipt has been designed so that it is large enough to be recycled, in case you ever wondered why you get such a big piece of paper when buying one item!

This has now become a good approximate measure. If a piece of paper or cardboard is smaller than a supermarket till receipt for one item, then it is too small to be recycled and should be treated like shredded paper and put into your black top rubbish kerbside bin. Use this as a size guide to what paper and cardboard can go into your blue top kerbside recycling bin.

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Recycle home page

Reducing black bin waste

Recycling as many products and items in our blue top bins isn’t the only solution to waste management. Keeping the amount we throw in our black top bins to a minimum can go a long way too.

• Rather than wipes, you can use small, washable face cloths

• When shopping, pay attention to use by dates - keeping food waste to a minimum

• Replace cling film and invest in a pack of reusable plastic covers

• Face masks are now a part of our lives, so washable masks are a great investment

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Recycling home page

Small electrical recycling service

Everything with a plug, battery or cable has the potential to be recycled. If you have an individual kerbside rubbish collection, you can recycle old or broken small electrical items at the kerbside.

Currently this service is not available if your bins are located in a communal bin store. You can find alternative electrical recycling options using the following link: https://bit.ly/2LcKBO3

How does the kerbside collection work? Most unwanted or broken small electrical appliances, those items powered by batteries or with a plug, cable or lead can be recycled at the kerbside. Small electrical appliance recycling is collected every two weeks with your normal scheduled rubbish collection.

• Little and Often - Please recycle “little and often” as space is limited on our collection vehicles for the storage of electrical items

• Bag It - Simply place the item(s) into a standard carrier size plastic bag (no larger than 35 x 40cm and not in black bin bags)

• Tie It – Securely tie the bag so the items do not fall out

• Recycle It - Place next to your black lidded rubbish bin on your scheduled collection day

For any items not on our kerbside collections checklist, please visit www.recycleyourelectricals.org.uk to find your nearest reuse or recycling point.

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Recycling home page