You’re just popping out to the bin with a ‘be right back’ but if you’re contaminating your recycling the nightmare may just be about to begin.

Contaminating (putting stuff that can’t be recycled here into your recycling bin) could mean that your recycling (and everything else in the back of the bin lorry) can’t be recycled and is disposed of with other waste.

Last year, we collected about 7,300 tonnes of recycling and almost 17% of it was things that could not be recycled. That's 1,241 tonnes (roughly the weight of 150 tyrannosaurus rexes) that has to be sifted out and sent to be burned for power.

The prime suspects are:

Zombie pizza boxes

They may look sort-of clean, but grease and stuck-on cheese makes takeaway pizza boxes un-recyclable. They can also infect other paper and cardboard making them un-recyclable too.

Put them in your refuse (green) bin.

Ghost plastics

At the moment we can only recycle bottle-shaped plastics. If it’s not a bottle, it can haunt the bin lorry when it goes to the tip, making it unrecyclable. If it’s not a bottle, don’t put it in.

Put them in your refuse (green) bin.

The Tetrapak trap

Tetrapak packaging can’t be recycled in Hampshire so don’t fall into the trap of putting it in your black bin.

Tetrapak should go in your refuse (green) bin.

Be the hero!

To be the hero of the story, find out what can (and can’t) go in your bins on our website.