Recycling

Overview

Garden Waste Bags

As a result of the council’s need to save £102million in the 2013/14 financial year, rolls of bags will no longer be provided for this service from the end of March. From that point, households will therefore need to purchase their own bags (available from most supermarkets and many other stores) to participate in the service.

Resident can place green garden waste in any colour sack. It is also recommended that the bags, as in previous years, should be left open when put out for collection, to aid their identification as green waste.

Compost bins can be purchased from www.birmingham.getcomposting.com or by calling 0845 130 6090.

If you want to know more about recycling the following information can help. If you wish to report a missed recycling collection please click on the Report Missed Refuse/Recycling Collection button above.

Essential Information

Most households in Birmingham now have a Doorstep Collection Service.

We collect:
- Paper and card from your blue box, every fortnight;
- Glass, bottles and jars, food and drinks cans and plastic bottles from your green box, every fortnight;
- Green sacks containing garden waste on alternate weeks to the above.
If you don’t currently have a doorstep collection of garden waste, we can collect up to two black bags of burnable garden waste (not soil or rubble) with your general domestic refuse.

If you have just moved into a new home, you can request bin bags or recycling containers.
An assisted service is available for people who are elderly and infirm or those with a physical disability. We cannot enter your property but can arrange to pick items up from immediately outside the property e.g. front door or side door if accessible.

We will discuss your requirements with you and if we are able to offer assistance, we will put the service in place within ten working days.

To get help with your recycling collections, just press the Request Assistance with Recycling Collection button at the top of page.
For general domestic refuse we provide either large containers for multi-occupied buildings such as flats and apartments.

For recycling we provide:
- Blue recycling box - paper/cardboard
- Green recycling box- glass/plastic bottles/jars food and drinks cans
- Large containers for multi-occupied buildings such as flats and apartments
You can report a problem with your recycling box or containers using the "Report Box/Container Problems button above".
We have a network of around 400 Local Recycling Centres and 5 Household Recycling Centres in Birmingham.

If you’ve noticed a problem at any of our recycling centres, such as rubbish overflowing or burnt-out or if you feel the recycling banks should be re-sited because you think it’s in an unsuitable place, please press the Report Problem at Recycling Site button above. Our response times are below.

Problem	Response within
Rubbish and litter around the recycling centre	One working day
Full or overflowing recycling banks	Two working days
Vandalised or burnt-out recycling banks	Two working days
Enquire about re siting your local recycling banks	We will contact you to discuss this. If we agree to re-site the banks, we will arrange to do it within 28 working days.

Do you have a lot of garden waste, such as grass and plant cuttings? Then why not save yourself some money and make your own compost?

You can buy a compost bin to suit your garden size and your budget.

View our composting page for more information.
Each year 55,000 tonnes of orange juice, soup and milk cartons are thrown away, which is equal to 2.3kg per person.

Residents in Birmingham, instead of throwing the milk and juice cartons away can now recycle them. Working with ACE (Alliance for Carton Recycling) there are now facilities to collect etra Pakcartons at the Household Recycling Centres. We are not currently able to take them via doorstep green box.

For more information about Tetra Pak and how they are recycled go to www.tetrapakrecycling.co.uk

For more information on what you can recycle and where please go to our A-Z of Recycling.

Frequently Asked Questions

- Call 0121 303 1112 and arrangements will be made to send you the relevant boxes and leaflets.
- Some flats already have recycling collections. However, because all flats are different, it can be complicated to arrange this. We are currently introducing recycling collections to flats across the whole city and hope to have as many suitable blocks on board this year.
  
  If you have a management or residents’ committee and the majority of residents would like the service, we can consider arranging it for you.
  
  Just email us at recycling@birmingham.gov.uk and we'll arrange a visit to consider if we can introduce recycling collections.
- The Household Recycling Centres have a dedicated box for household batteries. All shops that sell household batteries are required by law to provide a recycling point.
- The paper and card goes to the Smurfit Kappa mill at Nechells and is made into cardboard boxes. The glass/cans/plastic bottles currently go to a plant in Four Ashes, Wolverhampton. There are very few Material Recycling Facilities (MRF) that sort by machine, but it means we can take mixed materials without sorting them at the kerbside, which is costly and time consuming. The garden waste goes to composting facilities near the city and is composted on a large scale to be used for agricultural and landscaping purposes. This is why we cannot take anything in the green sacks that isn't compostable.
  
  A 40 litre bag of Care Compost made by composting green garden waste collected in Birmingham and the West Midlands can be purchased from either Gravelly Lane Garden Centre, Erdington B23 6UJ (0121 448 0776) or Martineal Gardens, Priory Road, Edgbaston B5 7UG (0121 440 7430).
- Yes, you can put it in another box or just bundle up the newspapers together to avoid them blowing around. Do not put plastic/cans/glass loose next to the recycling box, please put them in a bag or another box.
- Because there are many different types of plastics and they don't all melt down at the same temperature.
- Birmingham is one of the few authorities that landfills less than it recycles. Most local authorities landfill around 65%. We use an Energy from Waste plant at Tyseley and this converts the energy from burning waste into electricity.
- All the Council refuse and recycling vehicles are similar in appearance (i.e. large compaction vehicles), so it is being used as a recycling truck.
- You can use the Report Bag / Container Problems button on the Refuse Collection page and we will arrange for a replacement to be sent out to you.

Attachments

Reducing your waste

Can't open the PDF document?

Then download the free Adobe Reader from Adobe

External Links

We are not responsible for the content of other organisations' websites