Plastic bags and wrapping recycling trial expanding to Royston

Around a further 5,500 households in Royston and the surrounding area will be able to recycle their plastic bags and wrapping as part of their usual recycling collection.

They join around 2,200 households in Knebworth which started a pilot in October last year. Some households in Sawbridgeworth in East Herts will also join the trial, the plan being that all households in North Herts and East Herts will be able to recycle their soft plastics at the kerbside next year, as part of the two councils’ new joint waste contract which starts in May.

Participating households will receive special blue bags to put all their plastic bags and wrapping in, including crisp packets, confectionery wrappers, plastic film and bubble wrap  (unfortunately pet food pouches will not be accepted). They will also receive full details of the scheme, including exactly what can and can’t be collected, and how to present their blue bags on their usual collection day – with a secure double knot and placed in their (grey) recycling bin, on top of other materials.

Sarah Kingsley, Service Director for Place, said: “We are so pleased to be expanding the initial pilot in Knebworth to Royston and the surrounding area, which is a total of nearly 8,000 households in North Herts. Although plastic bags and wrapping don’t weigh that much, they can take up lots of space in people’s bins and it’s such a shame for them not to be recycled. We all need to look at how we can produce less waste and increase recycling, to reduce what we send to landfill.” 

Please do not put plastic bags and wrapping loose in your recycling (grey) bin – this will be classed as contamination and your bin will not be emptied. There are special blue collection bags for those on the trial. Knebworth residents should continue to put their blue bags in their paper recycling box or in their recycling bin. These will be sorted from other materials once they reach our recycling facility. Anyone not in the trial areas can take their flexible/soft plastics to a local supermarket collection point.   

North Herts Council was chosen to take part in this fully-funded project to test the collection of plastic bags and wrapping as part of our current fortnightly recycling collections. Plastic bags and wrapping are a considerable challenge as they represented 22% of all UK consumer plastic packaging in 2020, but only 8% was recycled. At present, the only way to recycle plastic bags and wrapping is at supermarket collection points.

Our trial is part of a larger £3m Flexible Plastic Fund (FPF) ‘FlexCollect’ project, which includes nine local authorities across England and aims to inform government and industry on how plastic bags and wrapping should be added to existing household collection services. The funding is provided by the FPF, the government Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and UK Research and the Innovation Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge Fund.

More information: Plastic Bags and Wrapping Recycling Local Collections | Recycle Now