Christmas recycling

Over Christmas, nearly all of your food and drink packaging, tins, cans and bottles can be recycled in your blue recycling bin and that'll leave a lot more room in your green household waste bin.

What you can and can't put in your blue recycling bin

What you CAN put in the main part of your blue bin:

Plain Christmas cards only (no glitter, bows, shiny parts)
Plastic/glass drinks bottles, cans, glass jars and plastic bottles (all rinsed out)
Aerosols
Dry cardboard, cardboard boxes and food boxes (flatten or tear them up first)
Wrapping paper inner tubes
Chocolate/sweet tins and plastic tubs, for example Quality Street tins/tubs
Paper, newspapers and magazines go in the black box (caddy) of your blue bin. Don't forget you can recycle the envelopes from your Christmas cards too

What you CAN'T put in your blue bin:

Christmas cards with glitter, shiny parts, bows or ribbons on them
Wrapping paper
Batteries and items containing sealed batteries - find out where you can recycle batteries.
Electricals
Polystyrene packaging
Any containers with food waste on them, including take away pizza boxes - this is because of the grease residue that remains on the cardboard
Plastic bags

Putting these items in your recycling bin will contaminate the whole load.

Top tips...

Please don't put anything in plastic bags, as the bags can't be recycled and the items inside go to waste. Just put any recyclables straight in the blue bin.

Rinse out food and drink containers before putting them in the blue bin.

Wrapping paper

At the moment, we cannot recycle wrapping paper.

A lot of wrapping paper, especially the shiny metallic variety, is made from plastic and metal foil (or both) and once that gets into the waste paper stream it can cause serious problems.

The other big problem is sticky tape. There is usually lots of it left on Christmas wrapping paper when it goes into the bin and this will also contaminate the waste paper stream, causing the same problems as those caused by the metal or plastic foil.

Too much Christmas recycling or general waste?

If you have any extra recycling or general waste that won't fit in your bin, you can use the Household Waste and Recycling Centres at Pallion, or Campground at Wrekenton. You must book to use these centres.

The Pallion site is closed on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Campground is closed on Christmas Day.

Real Christmas trees

You can recycle your real Christmas trees at one of the Household Waste and Recycling Centres. You must book to use the centres.

If you can't get your tree to a recycling centre you can:

Cut into smaller pieces and place it into your brown garden waste bin ready for collection when brown bin collections start again in March 2025
Book a bulky waste collection

Watch our helpful animation for some top tips on recycling this Christmas: