Published: Wednesday, 13th March 2019
Cannock Chase Council is reminding residents not to put nappies in their blue recycling bins in a new awareness campaign this spring.
The Council ran a contamination campaign in 2016 which raised awareness of the items which can contaminate dry recycling and result in rejected loads.
Nappy contamination still remains an issue in Cannock Chase, where a number of residents are putting dirty nappies in their blue recycling bin. This contaminates the dry recycling and is a potential health hazard for those workers at the Teeside Plant who have to sort the recycling by hand.
The awareness campaign will start in early March and will include refuse vehicle vinyls, social media messages and information on our website.
Councillor John Preece, Portfolio Leader for Environment said “We do understand that there may be a genuine reason why people think that nappies can be recycled, but they can’t.
All of our dry recycling is sorted out by hand once it reaches the Materials Recovery Facility, that means that if the nappy is not spotted by one of our refuse collectors then it can potentially contaminate a full load (32 tonnes) of dry recycling and be extremely unhygienic and unpleasant who sort out the recycling by hand.
We recognise that having a baby is very hectic and because people are in a hurry the nappies could be thrown in the wrong bin by mistake. This is why we are reminding people of the consequences when they get it wrong.”