Residents in Bath are being urged to use alternatives to wrapping paper this Christmas after it was revealed B&NES Council will not be collecting it for recycling this year.
Bath & North East Somerset Council announced earlier this month that it wouldn’t be able to collect wrapping paper this year due to issues with it being recycled at paper mills.
Explaining the situation, the local authority said that due to the low quality of wrapping paper, it is unsuitable to be used to produce the higher quality materials now being offered by UK-based paper mills.
Wrapping paper often has a very high ink content and may contain non-paper additives like glitter and plastics which cannot be recycled.
Other paper is very thin and contains few good quality fibres for recycling, so is often rejected.
The change means that the council will not be collecting wrapping paper as recyclable waste, and it should instead be put out with general waste in your black bin.
Even wrapping paper that might say “recyclable” on the label can’t actually be recycled unless it is brown.
Brown paper can be recycled if placed with cardboard into blue recycling bags, as long as any sticky tape or other decorations are removed first.
Councillor David Wood, joint cabinet member for Climate Emergency and Neighbourhood Services, said: “Wrapping paper often has a high ink content, contains plastics such as glitter and its fibre quality is low.
“It’s good for the environment that more of our recycling is done in the UK, but this means that the paper we send to paper mills has to be of a higher quality.
“Therefore we are unfortunately no longer able to accept wrapping paper in our recycling collections.
“Anyone who hasn’t wrapped their Christmas gifts yet could consider brown paper, which we can collect for recycling alongside cardboard, or use reusable bags and boxes.”
There will be no recycling or rubbish collections on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, 28th December or New Year’s Day.
