Reading Residents Urged To Recycle More This Christmas

READING'S residents are being urged to recycle more this Christmas, with 30% more waste likely to be generated over the festive period than normal. With much of that being recyclable waste, Reading Borough Council has issued a range of tips to help you to be as environmentally friendly as possible and recycle more than you throw away.

The main areas of additional festive waste are Christmas trees, wrapping paper, cardboard packaging and glass bottles. Aside from certain wrapping paper, all of this can be recycled. Here’s how:

Christmas Tree Recycling

The Council will be operating Christmas tree collection centres across the borough between 4 January  and 22 January. Residents can take their unwanted trees to the designated areas located in the car parks at:

• Albert Road Recreation Ground
• Clayfield Copse
• Hills Meadow
• Rivermead Leisure Centre
• Kensington Road Recreation Ground
• Prospect Park
• Meadway Recreation Ground
• Tilehurst Allotments in Armour Hill
• Palmer Park Sports Stadium
• Whitley Wood Recreational Ground
• South Reading Leisure Centre in Northumberland Avenue

Trees left at those collection points will be chipped and used in range of landscaping schemes across the borough. Other ways to dispose of your Christmas tree is to chop it up and put it in your green bin if you subscribe to the garden waste collection scheme, or alternatively book a slot at the re3 recycling centre and take it there.

The Recycling Centre, in Island Road, Reading, will be open between 8am and 6pm over the festive period except on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day when it will be closed. Also, it will be open between 8am-4pm on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

Wrapping paper and cardboard packaging

Whether wrapping paper can be recycled or not can confuse even a committed recycler, and the best way to work it out is via the ‘scrunch test’. If the wrapping paper stays scrunched up then it is paper-based and can go in your red recycling bin. However if it unfolds or springs back, it probably contains metallised plastic film and cannot be recycled and will need to go in your general waste bin. Christmas cards and cardboard packaging that comes with many presents can also be recycled in your red bin.

On the first collection after Christmas, households can leave out one extra bag of waste next to their grey bin. Additional recycling can be left in a cardboard box next to the red bin year round, but residents are asked to please try to keep any extra recycling they put out dry and not leave it out when it rains, as wet paper and cardboard cannot be processed.

Glass bottles

Glass bottles and jars can be taken to the many bottle banks located around the borough and people are able to find their nearest ones on the re3cyclopedia app.

Households can make room for their new gifts by donating unwanted items, such as clothes and toys, to their local charity shops. Textiles and clothing that are not sent to charity shops should be taken to Reading’s textile banks, or the re3 recycling centre, so they can be reused or recycled rather than sending them to landfill by putting them in household waste grey bins.

Changes to collection days

As usual, bin collection days will change over the holiday period and it is possible to check the revised dates at: www.reading.gov.uk/bindates.

Garden waste collections due on Friday 25th December will take place on Tuesday 29th December. The Garden Waste Service will then be suspended until week commencing 11th January, when collections will take place one day later than your normal collection day.

Looking forward to next Christmas already!

3,300 Reading households who are early adopters of the borough’s food waste recycling scheme will also be able to recycle their turkey bones, vegetable peelings, plate scrapings and all other left over food items. For the rest of Reading’s residents, this will be the last Christmas that they will have to put their turkey bones and other food waste in their general waste bin, with their kitchen caddies and outdoor food waste bins being delivered in January for weekly food waste collections starting in February.

Cllr Adele Barnett-Ward, Lead Councillor for Neighbourhoods and Communities, said:

“We all generate more waste at Christmas than usual, and I am pleased we are offering so many options across Reading to help us all recycle as much of it as possible. Christmas tree collection points, bookable appointments at the re3 recycling centre and the many bottle and textile banks around the borough will help everyone reduce the amount of waste that we send to landfill. The weekly food waste recycling collections already happening for 3,300 early adopter households is an additional exciting bonus this Christmas. It will be available to nearly everyone from February, so 2021 is set to be a year when we can all do our bit for the environment and push the recycling rate up”