Households in Moray can now recycle more plastic waste in purple bin

Working with contractors Wyllie Recycling, Moray Council can now accept all PET 1, HPDE 2 and PP 5 plastics including pots, tubs and trays (yoghurt and margarine tubs; plastic drinks bottles with lids; bathroom and shower bottles; cleaning and disinfectant bottles; tablet and medicine bottles).

Plastics which can’t be recycled and should go into the green bin are marked PVC 3, LDPE 4, PS 6, or 7, and include materials like cling film; carrier bags; crisp packets; coffee pods; polystyrene soft foam; and plastic toys.

Moray Council’s Waste Manager, Mike Neary, said: “We already know that residents in Moray are among the best at recycling in Scotland and we want to make it even easier for them to recycle more from the kerbside.

“What really makes a difference is how clean the contents of your purple bin are, so please take a few moments to rinse plastics and cans to remove leftover food and drink before popping them in the recycling bin. This helps ensure the recycling isn’t contaminated. And, importantly, please don’t put needles in your purple bin, these should go in dedicated sharps recycling containers.”

Plastics and cans collected from households in Moray are processed by Moray Reach Out, a social enterprise which provides training opportunities for vulnerable adults from across Moray. They are then collected by Wyllie Recycling and further processed at their brand-new facility in Perth. The first stage of this is to identify and remove any items of general waste as part of quality control, then the removal of any remaining metals, like tin cans, with industrial magnets and eddy-currents to ensure the highest purity of plastics.

Clean plastics are compressed into 1 tonne bales of clean high-quality plastics then separated, washed and flaked into pellets at UK re-processors to make new products like drinks bottles, fleeces, benches and toys.