...FROM COFFEE CUPS AND SARNIE WRAPPERS TO CRISP PACKETS AND EVEN BROKEN WINE GLASSES

FOIL POUCHES

AIR and liquidtight bags for things such as pet food and baby food are made using plastic-coated foil. They usually have to go in the regular waste as the elements are too difficult to separate.

PRINGLES CANS

ACCORDING to expert Simon Ellin, Pringles cans are one of the recycling plants’ worst nightmares. Made from five different materials, they are far too complex in construction to recycle easily.

TAKEAWAY SANDWICH CONTAINERS

LIKE coffee cups, these triangular boxes are often made from plastic-coated cardboard to keep their contents fresh. The tightly bonded plastic on the cardboard, and the clear plastic window, usually makes them too difficult to separate and recycle.

BLACK FOOD TRAYS

MOST black trays used for ready meals, meat and fruit end up in incinerators or landfill. The colour makes them invisible to the infra-red sorting systems in recycling plants. Even when they can be recycled, the plastic is low value as it can’t be recoloured.

COTTON WOOL

COTTON wool, cotton wool pads and cotton buds are not currently recyclable. Put them in your regular rubbish bin. NEVER try to flush them away — they can expand and cause plumbing blockages.

ANTIFREEZE BOTTLES

GLASS or plastic bottles that have contained chemicals that could be hazardous to recycling staff, such as paint, antifreeze, white spirit or stripper, should not be recycled (check the label for the best way to dispose of it). Bleach and toilet cleaner bottles are widely recycled. Just keep the lid on.

PLASTIC BOTTLES WITH POLYMER SLEEVES

SOME bottled milkshakes and sports drinks make recycling their plastic bottles much more difficult by wrapping the entire thing in a brightly coloured sleeve made of thinner plastic. This sleeve is a ‘complex polymer’, a type of material that’s very hard to recycle.

‘BLISTER’ PILL PACKETS

AGAIN, the combination of metal foil bonded to moulded plastic makes this a devilishly difficult piece of packaging to separate and recycle.

CLING FILM

CLING film and the peel-off see-through film lids you get on ready meals are made of a particular type of plastic that most plants can’t handle. Recycle the cardboard tubes, though.

BIRTHDAY CARDS

GLITTER-COVERED greetings cards — or musical cards with tiny batteries inside — can’t be recycled, unless the glitter and battery can be removed and disposed of first.

CRISP BAGS

MOST crisp bags are made from a metallised plastic film that is not recyclable — that’s an estimated six billion packets a year to landfill!

TOOTHPASTE TUBES

SQUEEZY tubes such as those used for toothpaste, hand cream and suncream are difficult to clean and recycle. The general advice is to throw them in with your everyday household waste.

CLEANING SPRAYS AND SOAP DISPENSERS

SOME councils accept these, but pump-action and trigger spray bottles used for soaps and cleaning products are typically difficult to dismantle and deal with. Aside from the four or five different polymers used to create the plastic elements, you have the tiny metal spring in the pump. You might be able to recycle the bottle, but the pump or trigger usually needs to be thrown into the rubbish bin — not ideal.

COFFEE CUPS AND PODS

THE combination of foil and plastic — used to make pods watertight — means they are too complex to deal with (though Nespresso offer a recycling service for theirs). We dispose of 10,000 takeaway coffee cups every two minutes in the UK. They are made from polyethylene-coated cardboard to keep them leakproof — but the materials can’t be separated, sending around seven million cups to landfill a day.

BROKEN WINE GLASSES

SOME types of glass melt at a different temperature to bottles and jars. If this glass gets into the recycling chain, the new containers made from it can end up being rejected. Drinks glasses, ovenproof glass, vases, lamp bulbs, mirrors and nail varnish bottles should all be recycled separately — your local council should be able to advise.

TISSUES AND KITCHEN ROLL

TISSUES use very short-fibre paper so are unsuitable for recycling. Kitchen roll is usually contaminated with food waste, but the cardboard inner tubes are recyclable.