Notes from SOW talk on 29/1/25, by Rachel Harrison from Foxton and Amanda Davis from Shepreth – a big thank you to them both!

Rachel and Amanda have both set up recycling bins in their villages for hard-to-recycle items. Rachel began after picking up litter on her lockdown walks. Amanda used to take her recycling to Foxton, but when Sustainable Shepreth was set up she joined as recycling officer.

Lots of people want to recycle, but don’t know how or it’s too difficult, so are very pleased to have the easy-to-use recycling bins in their own villages. It also doesn’t make sense environmentally for lots of individuals to travel separately to distant recycling facilities.

Amanda highlighted the really useful South Cambs website which gives an A-Z guide of how to recycle a huge range of different items, both those that go in Council bins and those that can’t. Here is Rachel’s slide on recycling in Cambridgeshire.

What can be recycled?

South Cambridgeshire blue bins take more types of waste than in many parts of the country (so we can often ignore black “Don’t recycle” labels.) Any plastic that scrunches then springs back can go in the blue bin. (Not composite plastic/foil like crisp packets.)

Big supermarkets [and the Cottenham Co-op] take soft plastics that can’t go in the blue bin, such as crisp packets and cat food pouches. But not everyone can get to such a shop regularly.

One problem is that small things fall through recycling machinery – that’s why they ask you to put bottle tops back onto bottles. And dirty recycling contaminates the rest and makes it lower-value or impossible to recycle – that’s why you should rinse everything first.

Things are changing all the time – eg. food packaging changes to be more recyclable.

SCDC is soon to send its recycling, currently sorted at Waterbeach, to north London (not Dublin as advertised) where 5% more different things can be recycled, justifying the extra mileage, according to Jon Crisp the Recycling Officer.

Milton Recycling Centre is expanding the range of things it can take (eg now CDs and coffee pods.) But will be closed for refurb for 9 months from autumn 2025.

But the main message is Reduce then Reuse (then Repair) and only then Recycle – because it’s not easy and sometimes not possible to recycle (eg when soft plastics are sometimes incinerated.)

Terracycle

This is an organisation which links manufacturers with recycling facilities, and gets manufacturers to sponsor schemes for hard-to-recycle products (often composites eg plastic and foil.) More details on how products are recycled are on their website, and part of Terracycle’s work is to pressurise manufacturers to improve recyclability.

You can sign up on their website to be a public collection point. Terracycle collect for free so it’s quite easy to send off but you do have to have a minimum weight. (Terracycle also market their Zero Waste boxes which you do have to pay for, but that’s different.)

You are awarded points if you collect a sufficient quantity (eg 3kg – that’s a LOT of wrappers) which can be converted into money for charity. Rachel has raised £100 for Foxton Pre-school.

Schemes do change and close which means that you may no longer be able to collect something – eg in Foxton, pens and toothbrushes were collected but both of these have recently closed.

A collection point may not be within five miles of another of the same type, which can mean a long car journey for people. But not the way Rachel and Amanda have set it up – people in Foxton and Shepreth can put items in their village bins. (See below.)

Setting up the scheme

Here’s Rachel’s summary of the guiding principles, what they did and how, and lessons learned.

Identifying/locating the bins

The Foxton bins, identified by flowery stickers, are sited in the car park between the school and village hall, where many people walk by.

Rachel put together a project plan and presented to the Parish Council. She told them she would measure success and report back. She bought the (half-size) bins (the Council had run out of spare bins) but the PC paid for the fixing bracket.

The Shepreth bins are red and also in the middle of the village, behind the village hall.

Promoting it

Both when the scheme started and throughout, to keep interest up and to tell people about changes (in what you can recycle.)

Rachel has done three mailshots through all Foxton letterboxes, and posts on facebook every time there’s a change or she learns something new. Plus posters, and a regular advert in the parish magazine.

Amanda put together a stand for the recent Shepreth Eco Fair demonstrating what you could recycle in blue bins and Shepreth red bins, and Rachel has done engagement events at the primary school.

Work involved

Strongly recommend not doing it on your own – both Rachel and Amanda are currently one-man-bands, although Rachel had a helper during lockdown.

You do need storage space – Rachel uses her spare bedroom!

Every week they empty the bins into black bin bags and sort them (Rachel takes several bags to the bin and sorts on the spot.)

They are often caught out when schemes change and they are left with a heap of stuff they can no longer send off for recycling.

Sometimes people mistakenly or deliberately put litter in the village bins – a cup of coffee, half-eaten takeaways – that means sorting through and cleaning the contents of the entire bin. Rachel says she gets cross, but it’s better than those things littering the countryside!

Also often get things in the red bins/flowery bins that can go in the normal blue bin.

Hub and spoke

Rachel and Amanda operate on a hub and spoke model. They let neighbouring villages know about their schemes, and (largely) each has signed up with Terracycle for different items so they swap bags of recycling.

Networking is very important – with different villages and also with groups within the village.

Blister packs – a problem

They were particularly keen to collect medicine blister packs and had a phenomenal response (in Foxton the volunteers who deliver medicines to older people were recruited to pick up the empties.) But Terracycle only allows pharmacies to be collection points for blister packs (because they can safely dispose of any tablets left in them, and Superdrug in town takes them. However they only have a small bin and turned away the sackfuls from Foxton. So very sadly these can no longer be collected in the village schemes. Rachel suggested writing to MPs and putting pressure on the drugs manufacturers (some of them local) to provide more recycling facilities.

Recycling other specific things

There were lots of questions/discussion about specific items…

• Toothpaste (or similar) tubes – many of these can now be recycled in the blue bin (wash first) – cut in half ad if no foil lining they can go in blue bin. (Look out for HDPE 2 recycling logo.)
• Emily and Bee mentioned deposits on bottles – this is something which may come back in the future.
• Households (rather than village schemes) can send off Gillette razors in an envelope.
• Bread bags – an example of something which has the “Can’t be recycled” logo on it but we can put in our blue bins.
• Pringles – new pringle packets can now be recycled normally.
• Cereal packet inner bags – can go in blue bin.
• Blue paper towel roll – if put in with paper it contaminates it.
• Bottle tops – composite metal/plastic ones can’t be recycled. The ones you lever off with a bottle opener can’t be recycled in blue bins because they are too small. James collects his up and takes to the Milton Recycling Centre metal bank.
• Contact lenses and containers – can be recycled through Terracycle.
• Coffee cups – apart from a few places (Costa) these can’t be recycled – they say compostable but our green bins can’t take them as they compost too slowly. Solution is a reusable coffee cup.
• Bubble wrap – can go in the blue bin but Emmaus also glad of it for their online sales.
• Textiles such as old pillows – can take to Dunelm.

Purses and raised beds

Rachel showed up purses she has made from plastic packaging! And Amanda is collecting packaging-filled plastic bottles to make raised beds with.

What next?

The audience included people from Landbeach, Northstowe and Rampton, and we agreed to keep in touch and see if we could organise something reciprocal just as Amanda and Rachel have done in their area.

SOW has some grey boxes and permission to put them by the church. However the items we were thinking of recycling – toothbrushes and pens – have just been discontinued by Terracycle, so need to discuss other possibilities.