A MAJOR change has been made to what residents in Tameside can recycle at home.
It has coincided with National Recycle Week this week, which focuses on rescuing items that can be recycled.
Households across the borough can now recycle a wider range of plastic items in their mixed recycling bin.
Previously, only plastic bottles could be recycled at home but now the likes of pots, tubs and trays can be recycled.
These include laundry powder tubs, chocolate tubs, fruit and vegetable punnets, black plastic trays such as raw and cooked meat, soup pots, yoghurt pots and cosmetic pots.
Such items can now be put in the mixed recycling bin alongside plastic bottles (e.g. milk, pop, bleach, cleaning products, trigger sprays and shampoo), glass bottles and jars, food tins and drinks cans, aerosols, and foil.
However, plastic films like crisp packets, bread bags, pet food pouches and carrier bags still cannot be recycled.
People can throw plastic films into their household bin, where they will be burned to generate electricity, however bosses say they are planning to collect these types of plastic for recycling in the future.
Hard plastics – like garden furniture or children’s toys – can be taken to any recycling centre across Greater Manchester, including the Bayley Street one in Stalybridge.
The recycling expansion has been made possible following upgrades at Greater Manchester’s materials recovery facility (MRF) where mixed recycling is sorted.
Greater Manchester Combined Authority says it is also building a new “state of the art” MRF that will use advanced sorting technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is to be completed “in the next three years”.
It comes as the Government requires all councils in England to recycle a consistent set of materials by April 2026, as part of its Simpler Recycling Policy – which means people will be able to recycle the same at work and at home regardless of where they live.
Major changes!!!! Er no not really.