Plastic bottle recycling explained

Residents will have noticed that purple, plastic bottle recycling banks have been installed by Welwyn Hatfield Council at many of the local recycling centres around the borough.

Plastic is one of the more complicated materials to recycle. Of all plastics, plastic bottles are the easiest to recycle into useful products and therefore the reprocessing outlet only accepts bottles. This means the council can only recycle plastic bottles.

Labelling varies greatly on plastic packaging, so it is difficult to specify every possible variation of acceptable recycling symbols. Please go to the Plastic Recycling page for details of the most commonly used abbreviations or symbols that can be found on the plastic bottles that the council can recycle. The council does not wish to collect items labelled with any other plastic abbreviation or symbol (this includes items labelled with a number higher than 3, no label at all, or ‘other’).

Councillor Alan Franey, Executive Member for Environment, said: “Now that the council has introduced plastic bottle recycling to the borough, we want to raise awareness of the range of plastics that are suitable for recycling. Too many of the incorrect plastics will contaminate the load and may result in it being rejected by the reprocessors. As well as being a waste of time and money, this undermines the green efforts of residents as the plastic could then end up in landfill.”

For more advice please contact the council on 01707 357000 or visit the Environment section on the council’s website.