Bins and recycling - what goes where

These are usually made from steel and aluminium. Both of these metals are recyclable.

Please make sure they are empty and do not squash.

This must not be put in your household bin.

Please see Asbestos for advice on reporting and removing asbestos.

Check in your local supermarket - they often have household battery recycling containers.

Try using reusable batteries in appliances and items! They are kinder to the environment.

Duvets, pillows or quilts could be reused as kneeling pads for gardening, or bedding for pets.

Flat bedding such as pillow cases, sheets and duvet covers can be taken to charity shops for reuse.

Don't put fabrics in the green recycling bin, this can wrap around the machinery at our materials recycling facility and cause damage.

Many of the bikes taken to our household waste recycling centres are repaired for reuse.

Donate books where possible so that others can read them.

If the books are too damaged to be given away, take off any hard covers and then put in your green bin. This makes the paper pages easier to recycle.

How about borrowing books from your local library?

Metal bottle tops and lids are made of steel or aluminium and can be recycled along with metal cans and aerosols.

Include these with plastic bottles in the green bin. These can also go in the grey bin.

Reuse as insulation for greenhouses and plant pots.

Use it to pack items to send through the post.

Use it to wrap objects when moving or for storage.

Bubble wrap can be recycled in supermarket plastic wrapper collections.

These are usually made from steel and aluminium. Both of these metals are recyclable.

Clean out and squash first to make room for more recycling.

Flat pack cardboard boxes and save them for storage or moving home.

Give them away via reuse networks.

Tear up and use on your compost pile or wormery.

Place small sections on top of compost heaps to keep in the heat and your compost heap more productive.

Consider reusing old carpets as flooring in sheds or cupboards, or garages.

Animal shelters often use rugs for mats in kennels or bedding.

These are good for ground coverage to keep down weeds in allotments.

Reusable artificial trees can be donated to charities or taken to the reuse containers at household waste recycling centres.

Real trees can be recycled at household waste recycling centres.

Look out for charity collection schemes after Christmas.

Use old textiles for craft projects such as rag rugs.

Gain ideas for what to do with clothes from Love Your Clothes .

Consider repairing curtains where possible or turn them into something else for example cushion covers, padding for chairs, cleaning cloths.

Unwanted clothes can be taken to charity shops, given away to friends or family, sold online or at jumble and car boot sales.

Many charity shops will also take rags.

Some sites that will weigh in textiles and pay via weight.

Over 1 million tonnes of clothing and other textiles is thrown away in the UK each year. If this was compressed it would be as wide as Canary Wharf and 3 times taller.

How about starting your own textile swapping event? For inspiration take a look at Swishing .

Offer your reusable spares on Freegle for sale or swap.

Not only does used cooking oil create power, it also helps to reduce the UK's reliance on fossil fuels and is increasingly used to create vegetable oil fuel.

Oil should never be poured down a drain. 1 litre of oil can pollute up to 1 million litres of water drinking water.

Always securely delete any information before getting rid of a computer.

Some shops will also take in old computers and laptops and recondition them for resale. Check with companies local to you.

If you are collecting these for fundraising, you might like to know that crisp packets are in fact made of a metallised plastic film. To decide if it is real foil, you can do the scrunch test! If you scrunch the item in your hand and it springs back open, it is plastic film. If the item stays scrunched it is aluminium foil. Crisp packets can be recycled in supermarket plastic wrapper collections and at Terracycle collections point across Kirklees.

These are made from plastic coated paper and cannot be recycled with paper at this time.

Some coffee shops now allow customers to bring their own reusable cups.

Check with your favourite coffee outlet.

You can also use a skip hire company to dispose of DIY waste.

Please bag up and place in your grey bin only. This waste cannot be composted or recycled.

When out walking your dog please remember to take 'poo bags' with you to pick up any mess, leaving the paths pleasant for other walkers. Safely bagged dog waste can now be put in any street litter bin or taken home and placed in the grey bin.

More information: Dog fouling.

Cartons are taken to a facility near Halifax where each layer of the carton is separated, and the materials are then recycled.

Add crushed eggshells to your compost bin to help add calcium.

Whizz dried eggshells up in a food processor and add small amounts when needed to your wormery - this will help control the acidity levels in the bin, and the worms use it to help their digestion.

Please ensure the waste engine oil is placed in a secure container.

Following refinement, it can be distilled into diesel fuel, or use as hydraulic oil.

Oil should never be poured down a drain - 1 litre of oil can pollute up to 1 million litres of water drinking water.

They go in the small electricals skip at household waste recycling centres.

You could give them away on sites like Freecycle or Freegle .

Foil cannot be recycled in your green bin. This is because it can't be recycled if it is not clean, and we are unable to check every bit of foil for contamination.

There are local initiatives which take clean foil and foil trays to raise money for charities. Please check in your local community centres, fair trade shops and community hubs.

Love Food Hate Waste has lots of great tips to reuse food.

Mix vegetable and fruit peelings in compost with items which are slow to rot such as paper clippings, egg boxes and cardboard.

Did you know that 36% of waste in the grey bin is food waste? The average family could save £700 a year, simply by throwing away less food.

We run a series of workshops aimed at preventing food waste.

A simple repair to broken but safe and useable items of furniture could extend the life of your item.

Remember to check if upholstered furniture has its fire safety label intact when you pass on items to local charities.

They go in the small electricals skip at household waste recycling centres.

All the garden waste collected at household waste recycling centres is sent to be turned into compost.

It cannot include soil or rubble, infected plants, or invasive weeds like Japanese Knotweed.

We have over 130 bottle banks across Kirklees. Many are located at supermarkets and convenient car parks.

Empty bottles and jars are great for all sorts of reuse, from jam making, to storage for odds and ends, to candle holders or flower vases.

Do not put in your green bin - glass causes cuts and injuries to staff, and damages machinery.

Broken or old double-glazed windowpanes must be taken to your local Household Waste Recycling Centre. Unfortunately, the glass used in them is not recyclable as it is made from toughened glass which has a different chemical composition to standard glass.

Although Pyrex is made of glass, it can't be recycled because it's been chemically treated to withstand high temperatures, which changes the composition of the glass.

Broken household glass items such drinks glasses, or pyrex dishes should be wrapped up and put in the grey bin.

Some optician companies collect unwanted reading glasses for charitable donations to other countries.

Try your local charity shops - some will also take all types of unwanted reading glasses.

The decorations and foil lettering on cards cannot be recycled. Separate the paper backs from your glittery cards and recycle this bit only.

How about reusing non-recyclable decorated cards by turning them into gift tags or new cards.

Return NHS hearing aids to your local surgery or hospital department.

These can be taken to some supermarkets and electrical goods stores.

You can reduce the amount of junk mail you receive by registering online with the Mail Preference Service. or call them to register on 0207 291 3310.

There are many different types of lightbulb including incandescent, compact fluorescent, fluorescent, Halogen, LED - take all your lightbulbs to the household waste recycling centres and we'll sort them.

Fibre glass and rock wool insulation are irritants. If you are removing them, make sure you have a face mask to keep the fibres from being inhaled.

Please bag it before taking to a household waste recycling centre.

Take any unused medication back to your nearest pharmacy for safe disposal.

Charity shops and some furniture reuse shops accept donations.

To dispose at the household waste recycling centres, please place in the scrap metal skips provided. Check on the type of metal with staff.

If the glass on your mirror is broken, please wrap it up before putting it in the grey bin.

Consider reusable cloth nappies. Find a nappy library near you .

Babies use over 4000 nappies before they're potty-trained, and an average of 5000 nappies in total. This adds up to a whopping 400,000 tonnes of waste every year, or 2-3% of all household waste! That's 3 billion nappies per year just in England and Wales.

7 million trees are cut down each year to make disposable nappies.

Break up natural corks into small bits - you can whizz them up in a food processor - to place them in your home composting pile. Only use a small amount at a time.

Use ground up cork or slices of cork as a mulch for plants.

Put corks at the top of garden canes for safety.

Corks are great for art and craft projects like making pin boards, turning them into cork stamps or making snakes, boats, necklaces and loads more.

Leftover paint can be used for loads of craft ideas or simply to brighten up items in your home or garden.

Consider offering unwanted paint to local groups who could use them for art or mural projects.

Empty or partly full paint cans can be taken to any household waste recycling centre.

Use scrap paper for shopping lists, to do lists, reminders and all sorts of other useful paper-based projects. Magazines are also great for craft and collage projects.

Consider passing magazines you have read on to friends.

All paper pamphlets and flyers can be placed in your green bin. So can the Yellow Pages and other directories, although put the plastic wrapper they came in into the grey bin.

Reuse padded envelopes.

Each tonne of recycled paper can save approximately: 17 trees, 1438 litres of oil, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 26,497 litres of water.

70% less energy is needed to recycle paper as opposed to making it from raw materials.

Small amounts can be put in compost bins or reused for pet bedding so long as it is not glossy paper.

We are not able to take shredded paper for recycling.

To dispose of it, please put this in your grey bin, ideally in its own bag.

If you have regular and large amounts of shredded paper, you could consider contacting a paper shredding service.

Bag it up and put it in your grey bin or take to your nearest household waste recycling centre for disposal.

Many charity shops have special collection containers for old mobile phones.

You must book online before you can dispose of your plaster and plasterboard waste at a household waste recycling centre.

Disposal is free for Kirklees householders.

Conditions and the form are on the household waste recycling centres page.

Plastic bags can be taken to supermarkets for recycling.

Use plastic bags as liners for your household bins - or knit with old plastic bags and create something funky.

It's so important to recycle them - they are made from non-renewable oil and take hundreds of years to break down and never fully decompose. Tiny plastic particles are now being found in water supplies and soil samples. More information: Plastic Oceans .

You could take the 4Rs Pledge (Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and opt for jute or canvas bags instead.

When you can't reuse a carrier bag any longer, place it in the recycling container in your local supermarket. Please don't put them in your green recycling bin. They can't be recycled through our recycling facility and often contain items such as food that contaminates other recycling items.

More information about reducing plastic: Plastic Pollution Coalition .

Remember to include plastic bottles from all rooms of the house including shampoo and shower gel from the bathroom, bleach bottles and washing up liquid bottles from the kitchen.

Clean out bottles before recycling them.

Netted produce bags that resemble fabric fishing nets, and are made from nylon and other fabric-like synthetics, are not recyclable. They can get tangled in the sorting equipment at recycling facilities.

There are also some schemes run by garden centres that will recycle plant pots.

This is sent to our Energy from Waste Facility and converted into electricity.

Polystyrene is sent to our Energy from Waste facility and converted into electricity.

Some charity and reuse networks will accept metal items.

To dispose at the household waste recycling centres, please place in the scrap metal skips provided.

Sometimes a simple resole at a nearby cobblers and shoe repair shop can keep you wearing your beloved shoes!.

Only donate boots and shoes or take them to recycling sites if they are in good condition.

Give building materials to family or friends who may need them for their own projects.

Advertise unwanted materials online or see if there are any community projects nearby that may make use of them.

Toys and games that are in good condition should be donated, so they can be reused. Charities, learning centres and community groups are frequently seeking such items.

Collectors often want toys and games that are in good condition.

Due to the variety of different plastics that can be in a plastic toy, they cannot be put in the green bin.

You can also use a skip hire company to dispose of unwanted turf.

Ask family and friends if they can use your spare turf. Offer it on local social media sites - people love free things.

To dispose of tyres from business vehicles, please contact a garage to arrange this.

If you recycle it at a household waste recycling centre, remove the fabric from the metal and recycle in the textiles and metal skips.

Very few charities will accept videotapes (unless of children's shows), but sites like Freecycle may find interested parties. Unfortunately, they cannot be recycled, so will have to go in the grey bin.

Do not put in the green bin - the tape wraps around the machinery at the recycling facility and can cause a problem.

Use for craft and household projects, lining drawers, or as an alternative to wrapping paper. Donate to a school.

Recycling For Good Causes will accept watches via the post, regardless of condition, to raise money for organisations like the Brownies.

You can check with the manufacturer if electrical goods can be repaired.

You can find lots of repair advice at espares and ifixit .

Electrical goods must be in good working order and be able to pass an electrical safety check when you pass them onto local charities.

You can take wood to any of the Kirklees household waste recycling centres.

Most gift wrap isn't recyclable because it is decorated with glitter or shiny film.

Wrapping paper placed in your grey bin is sent to our Energy from Waste facility and converted into electricity.

If gift wrap is 100% paper it can be recycled in your green bin: Green bins.