Ashford residents: Look out for new recycling stickers on your bin

Ashford adds to its award winning recycling scheme by putting new recycling stickers onto bins to help residents remember what goes where.

From glass bottles and jam jars to aerosol cans and cardboard packaging there are plenty of household objects you can recycle, and the new recycling stickers can help you know which.

To build on Ashford’s fantastic recycling success so far and to help our residents remember which items they can place in their recycling bin, we have created a handy sticker with clear pictures of waste items that can be recycled. The council’s contractor, Biffa, will be placing the stickers on the lid of the green recycling bins from Monday 19th March.

Any unrecyclable item has the potential to contaminate a whole load, which could represent as many as 500 households that have carefully separated the right materials for recycling, which is why we are encouraging residents to look at the handy sticker and recycle smart. We also hope this will help us to avoid penalties from rejected loads which costs the council and taxpayers money.

Cllr Clair Bell, Portfolio Holder for Environment and Land Management, said: “Ashford is doing a tremendous job at recycling and last year we found out we were the best recycling local authority in Kent for a third consecutive year. However, we are always striving to improve our performance by ensuring the recycling collected is of the highest quality, and we need our residents to help us achieve this.

“We hope the stickers encourage residents to recycle as much as possible and act as a useful reminder of the items that can be placed in their green bin.”

Any additional clean recycling can be placed in a clear plastic bag can be left out on recycling week ready for Biffa to collect. Any waste not in a clear plastic bag will not be collected. You can maximise space in your green recycling bin by flattening cardboard boxes and plastic bottles.

We understand mistakes can happen which is why we are also encouraging residents to use the new ‘Wheel of Waste tool’ – simply twist the wheel to reveal which bin common household waste items should be placed in. Contact [email protected] to request a free copy.

Since the council launched the new-look recycling service in 2013, the borough has quadrupled its recycling performance, been named the country’s most improved recycling authority, and been shortlisted for two categories in the 2015 National Recycling Awards.