Dispose of nappies the right way

Residents in Erewash are being encouraged to help improve the quality of the borough’s recycling by disposing of nappies correctly and reducing contamination

Residents typically recycle around 9,500 tonnes of waste each year but Erewash Borough Council wants to ensure the kerbside collection service is used properly by reminding people that nappies should not be put in blue bins or green bags.

Recent figures show that over a seven week period, ten lorry loads of Erewash’s recycling were visibly contaminated with nappies.  This level of contamination could lead to loads being rejected at the council’s expense.

All of Erewash’s recycling, along with materials from a number of other councils, is sent to a material recycling facility (MRF) for processing.  The company processing this recycling has increasingly found high numbers of nappies in loads, with more than 1,000 nappies being found on a daily basis. If a single dirty nappy is found in a separated load after processing the whole load will be rejected and returned to the facility.   

The recycling goes through quality control checks which identifies contaminated materials such as food waste, wood, clothes, medical waste and electrical items.  All of the contaminated material has to be removed before the recyclable material can be processed. If a load contains more than 50 prohibited items it could be rejected. 

Councillor Garry Hickton, Lead Member for Environment at Erewash Borough Council, said: “We would ask everyone in Erewash to do their bit to recycle right and help the environment.  This starts with making sure that they only put recyclable materials in their blue bins and green bags.  Putting dirty nappies in blue bins has a detrimental effect on the recycling process and we would remind people that nappies should only be disposed of in the black bin.”

For more information about what can be recycled please visit erewash.gov.uk/recycling.