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Recycling in Waltham Forest

Last updated 17 May 2013

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The Council operates a mixed recycling food and garden waste service.  The green bin or green bag is for mixed recycling and the brown is for food and garden waste. See also household recycling collections

How is recycling collected

Mixed recycling

Your recycling is collected weekly by a mixed recycling vehicle then later sorted mechanically and by hand at a material recovery facility (MRF). Your recycling will not be sent to landfill.

What can be recycled

See below the list of items that can be recycled in the green bin for houses and flats:

  • Paper Cardboard (flattened)
  • Plastic bottles (rinsed)
  • Tins, cans and foil (rinsed)
  • Glass bottles and jars (rinsed)
  • Tetra Pak Food and drink cartons
  • Plastic bags and magazine wrapping
  • Plastic cups and straws
  • Other plastic food and drink packaging (such as yogurt pots, ice cream tubs, margarine containers, fruit punnets and bottle tops)

Food and garden waste

From April 2 until September 27 2013, we will be offering a weekly collection of your food and garden waste from the brown bin.  This will be collected each week on the same day as your normal waste and recycling collection. 

After this period, your collection will revert back to fortnightly.

See food and garden waste; 5-Steps 

Material recovery facility (MRF)

  • The MRF is operated by a series of convey belts, screens and technology to sort all the different materials
  • Once the material has been split into its separate streams it is bulked and sent onto reprocessors
  • The material is loaded on to the main feed and the first process is to remove the cardboard
  • It then goes through the "glass breaker" which as its name suggests sorts all the glass
  • Remaining material continues through to the paper screens where all paper is removed and taken off to be bulked and sent to reprocessors
  • The material then passes over a magnet which removes anything containing any metal
  • The next screen the material passes over removes all the large plastic bottles
  • Material remaining travels through a separator which uses electro magnetic fields to removes all the aluminium
  • All material left travels on to the plastics separation phase, here we use optical lasers to identify and sort the material in to the many different types of plastic

You can view a video of what happens to recycling at http://www.biffa.co.uk/about-biffa/media-centre/videos.html

What happens after the MRF?

The separated materials are then sent to reprocessors (various companies for recycling and reuse).

In Waltham Forest:

  • Glass is crushed and processed at Glass Recycling (UK) Ltd in South Yorkshire to be made into new bottles or jars
  • Cans are taken to Firbank Chiltern in Bedfordshire to be recycled into aluminium ingots, that can be used to make many products including aeroplanes, bikes and computers
  • Paper is delivered to Chas Storer Ltd in Hertfordshire for recycling into paper based products
  • Cardboard is taken to Biffa in Leicestershire where it is reprocessed into new cardboard
  • Plastic bottles are sorted into the different plastic types and transported to Choice Waste Management Ltd in Bedfordshire and Biffa Polymers Ltd in North Yorkshire, to be recycled into more bottles and other plastic products like guttering and even clothing!
  • Other plastics, such as food trays, yogurt pots and margarine tubs are also delivered to Choice Waste Management Ltd in Bedfordshire where they are used to make other plastics for packaging, cartons and cups Subsidy for real nappies

Recycling bikes

See recycling bikes

Real nappies

Waltham Forest Council offers up to £54.15 against the purchase of real nappies or the use of a real nappy washing service. The scheme is funded by the North London Waste Authority.

Download a real nappy subsidy form.

Throwaway nappies can cost up to £600 per baby, so using real nappies can save you money.

Around 800,000 tonnes of nappy waste are thrown away in the UK each year, so using real nappies will also reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill.

More information is available from the Real Nappy Campaign or contact Street Care via email streetcare.services@walthamforest.gov.uk

Recycling Incentive Scheme 

A recycling incentive scheme will operate between  April 1 2013 and March 28 2014.
 
The scheme will be undertaken by rewarding the best performing recycling ward with £500 per month.
 
Where there is more than one ward in the winning group then each ward will be allocated £500 each. The £500 award money will be distributed via the ward forums and must be spent for the benefit of that ward.
 
Performance will be based on the amount of dry recycling tonnage collected from each ward per month.  Every month the tonnage collected from each ward will be compared against the previous month.
 
Recycling performance each month, along with the winning ward(s) will be announced in the first week of each month.
 
 
Congratulations Grove Green and Leyton on being the first winners
 
 
Any questions?
If you have any questions then please call us on 020 8496 3000 or wfdirect@walthamforest.gov.uk
 

 

 

Further Information

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

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