Christmas is a time when we all generate more waste than normal, we certainly do in our family. East Riding of Yorkshire Council have kindly put together this information on how to dispose of waste correctly and some great tips to reuse or recycle items (plus a few of my Mumbler favourites!). There are also some lovely videos to show your children why we all need to play our part in helping the planet (I love the last one with my favourite CBeebies presenter Andy and the voice of Daddy Pig!).
Lets start with the biggest extra item in our house for the festive season – food!
Food Waste & Leftovers
Use your kitchen caddy to collect all your festive and Christmas lunch food waste for composting through your brown bin, such as vegetable peelings, bones and carcasses, fat from cooked roast meats, plate scrapings, nut shells and all leftovers that cannot be saved for later. Caddy liners are still available for resident to collect at any East Riding library, customer service centres, leisure centres (except South Holderness) and all the Household Waste Recycling Sites, all placed at the front doors and entrances. If you run out of liners you can use a sheet of newspaper or just put the food in loose and rinse out each time.
Food that is not used but near it’s used by date can be stored better to last longer or frozen to extend use. Love Food Hate Waste has a brilliant A-Z guide of how to store all foods to get the best shelf life, use and longevity out of them here.
Turn Christmas leftovers into family meals instead of throwing away good food, find recipes here, or type in 3 ingredients you have to find recipes to use them up here. We love a turkey curry to use up our leftover turkey. I also blitz all my leftover vegetables and potatoes to make a soup to either eat or freeze.
Make a bird feeder: Any leftover lard, grated cheese, raisins or peanuts can be made into bird feeder cakes for garden birds instead of throwing them away. The RSPB have an easy recipe and instructions here.
Food Packaging
We will get through a lot of extra treats this Christmas; here’s a guide to where to put the empty packaging:
- Large, plastic or metal sweet and chocolate tubs like Roses, Celebrations etc are recyclable and can be placed (empty) into your blue recycling bin, including the lids. Same applies for tins of biscuits – “Whether plastic or tin, biscuit tins can go in the blue bin”.
- The plastic, silver wrappers that these type of sweets and chocolates are individually wrapped in are not foil and therefore are not recyclable. They should be placed into the green bin only.
- Biscuits – The inner plastic packaging from biscuits (that the biscuits sit in, inside the biscuit tins) are not recyclable and should be placed into your green bin – outside tubs/tins are recyclable (blue bin), inside plastic packing not recyclable (green bin).
- Chocolates – Cardboard chocolate boxes (the outer boxes) are recyclable through the blue bin but the inner plastic packaging that the chocolates sit in and the inner plastic packaging layers between the trays are not recyclable and should be placed into your green bin.
- Cellophane wrapping from around any sweets, biscuits, chocolates, candy canes are not recyclable and should be placed into your green bin only.
- Foil from chocolate money is recyclable through the blue bin but the string bags the chocolate money is packaged in is not recyclable and should be placed into the green bin.
- Crisp packets and their outer multipack bags are not recyclable and should be placed into your green bin.
- Left over chocolates and biscuits can be used to make lots of baked goods (we use ours up in rocky road). Find some good recipes here.
Dinner Table Items
The best option is to use crockery or reusable tableware which can be washed and reused again. If you are using disposable tableware such as plastic cutlery, plastic cups, paper plates/bowls, napkins and disposable table cloths these are not recyclable and should only be placed into your green bin.
Aluminium foil from food is recyclable if it is not too dirty and has been cleaned and dried. These can include items such as aluminium meat pie cases (including those from mince pies & other Mr Kipling type buns/cakes too), disposable aluminium roasting tins, foil from cooking your turkey and even oxo cube foil wrappers. Just remember to make sure they are clean and rinsed out.
Christmas crackers – the cardboard tube, paper outside, paper joke and paper hats are all recyclable in the blue bin. The ‘banger’, any ribbon/string and any plastic toys inside are not recyclable and should be placed into the green bin.
Gift packaging
Here’s how to dispose of your wrapping paper and items after Santa has delivered the presents and they are open!
- Ribbons, string and bows etc are not recyclable and should go in your green bin.
- Sellotape – peel as much off the wrapping paper as possible and place in the green bin.
- Wrapping paper – most wrapping paper can go in the blue bin for recycling. Do the Santa scrunch test on wrapping paper to see if it’s a recyclable type or not here.
- Cardboard – peel as much tape off as possible, flatten larger boxes and either leave between your blue bin & fence/hedge/wall on blue bin collection day to stop it blowing away or place flattened cardboard into 1x full box next to your blue bin. Please don’t squash large/many cardboard boxes into your blue bin as it won’t come out during emptying on collection day.
- Polystyrene is not recyclable and should only go in your green bin. Large pieces of polystyrene can be taken yourself to the Household Waste Recycling Sites/tips. Click here to see your nearest site and opening times.
- The only plastic taken in the blue bin are plastic pots, bottles, tubs & trays. Any other kind of plastic packaging is not recyclable and should be placed in your green bin.
- Save your Christmas cards to make into gift tags for next year. This is something we do every year, we even keep them in a special homemade/recycled box!
New electrical goods, gifts and batteries
A lot of us will be unwrapping new electronics or electrical items this year. My 10 year old has an electronic item as his main present and Mr Mumbler says he’s buying me a new hoover (lucky me!). Here’s some tips on disposal and recycling –
- Electrical items, plugs, wires and batteries cannot be placed into any of your household bins.
- All old, working small electrical items which may have been replaced with new gifts at Christmas should be offered for reuse initially, there are plenty of buying & selling sites on internet, Money Saving Expert has some good tips to find a suitable site yourself here. However if the item is broken it should be taken to the nearest HWRS/tip and placed into the small electrical skip for correct disposal of the metals inside.
- Any white goods, such as fridges, freezers, washers & dryers, which are still in working order can be taken yourself to the HWRS/tips and ask for the item to be donated to the Reuse shop for resale. The Reuse shop currently offers a home testing & collection service, in both Hull and East Riding, for items being donated to the shop. Call 01482 710284 or email b.stothard@dovehouse.org.uk.
- Old batteries should be placed into the specific battery recycling vessels at supermarkets and shops or at the HWRS/tips.
Textiles, clothing and shoes
We’ve covered correct disposal of textiles before on Mumbler (read the full article here), but here’s a quick reminder for Christmas as it’s a time when we may be getting new clothes as gifts and be clearing out old ones –
- Clothing, shoes and textiles should be taken to either charity shops for reuse or to the clothing banks in East Riding for recycling. Find your nearest clothing bank in the East Riding here. They cannot be recycled through the blue bin kerb side collections so please do not place any textiles, clothing, shoes or bags into the blue bin.
- Sale shopping – ideas of how to shop savvy, save money and not waste clothing can be found at Love Your Clothes website here.
- Duvets, blankets and sleeping bags can be donated to homeless charities or to animal shelters for bedding.
To finish off with, here’s a lovely video which I’ve watched with my children to explain to them why we all need to do our bit. It has my favourite CBeebies presenter Andy Day in and Santa is voiced by Daddy Pig from Peppa! It’s about climate change and saving the North Pole –
Help Santa Save the North Pole! A Christmas Video – YouTube.
There are more great resources, activities videos for children on this website from The Pod.
NB This is an Advertorial Feature for East Riding of Yorkshire Council