Contamination reduction targeted in Lincoln

The city council has teamed up with its waste collection partners, Cory Environmental, to start attaching stickers to each of its brown recycling bins explaining what materials can be accepted.

Waste collectors will also start using new tags, which will be wrapped around peoples bin handle if their waste is contaminated. The tags will show people what can be placed in their bin, ask them to remove the contamination and then present their bin for emptying next time.

According to the city council, the new initiative is being launched imminently as recycling contamination levels in Lincoln have been increasing in recent months, with daily samples showing that contamination is currently running at around 10%.

Contamination at those levels can mean whole loads of material sent for recycling being rejected, so the council is hoping the stickers will help to bring contamination down below 5%.

Once the recycling material is collected by the city council, it is handed over to Viridor, Lincolnshire county councils recycling contractor, which processes it its materials recycling facility (MRF) in Crayford, Kent. Any rejected material is sent to landfill, which incurs extra cost.

Items that can be placed in the brown recycling bins include glass, paper, food and drink cans, plastic bottles, cardboard and food and drink cartons.

Items not recycled

According to the city council, the three main items mistakenly included for recycling are:

• Textiles these have been accepted through kerbside collections in the past but should now be taken to charity shops or textile banks.
• Black bin bags these cannot be recycled for practical reasons, according to the city council. People who have surplus recyclable waste are instructed to leave it in cardboard boxes next to their bin or in non-black bags clearly marked as recycling.
• Food waste this contaminates recyclable materials that it comes into contact with meaning it all has to be rejected. Rinsing of food containers helps to reduce this.

Caroline Pritchard, community services manager at the city of Lincoln council said: Contamination is the big problem. In recent months this has gone up quite a bit – usually because people dont understand what goes in the bin but, in a small minority of cases, because people dont care. We then pass the waste on to the county council who are telling us the contamination level is high which risks increasing costs.

Ms Pritchard added: I would like to stress the positive and say that Lincolns residents have been excellent recyclers for the most part so we thank them for that. We want to make sure that people know what can go in the bins so we can recycle as much as possible and keep up that good record.