Touch of glass as Leeds gears up for start of kerbside collections

Households across Leeds will be able to recycle glass bottles and jars in their green bins for the first time from the start of August.

This includes all colours of glass and means that everything from wine, spirits and beer bottles, to jam jars and pasta sauce jars can now all be recycled in the Leeds green bin.

All the glass bottles and jars collected from the green bins will be recycled and remelted in Yorkshire and turned into new bottles and jars ready for use within a month. Caps, lids and labels can be left on ready for collection.

Glass bottles and jars are 100 per cent recyclable and can be recycled endlessly without any loss in quality. Despite a huge network of bottle banks across the city, more than half of glass bottles and jars in Leeds are currently put in black general waste household bins and incinerated. This amounts to 11,400 tonnes of glass which from August 1 can be placed in the green bin instead and recycled. The environmental benefit would be an annual carbon saving of 2,600 tonnes, the equivalent of taking more than 975 cars off the road each year.

The local network of over 700 bottle banks in Leeds will remain in place for added convenience.

For clarity, the green bin is for glass bottles and jars of any colour; but other items such as oven-proof dishes, light bulbs, window or drinking glass do not melt at the same temperature as recyclable bottles and jars, so can either be put in the black bin or taken to the nearest household waste and recycling centre.

Leeds City Council’s executive member for climate, energy, environment and green space, Councillor Mohammed Rafique said:

“We are delighted to be able to start this glass collection service, which we know has long been an aspiration for the city and its residents. From August 1st people can put their bottles and jars in their existing green bin which will help make a significant difference to our recycling rates and benefit the environment and the local economy. This is part of providing simpler recycling opportunities and choices for Leeds residents, without creating more bins for them to manage and put out on the streets. It will be a win-win all round and we can’t wait to get it started.”

Notes to editors:

Leeds refuse service currently empty on average half a million bins every week. Annually this equates to the collection and disposal of almost a quarter of a million tonnes of household waste from the black, green and brown bins; but with less than half a percent of all Leeds waste going to landfill.

Accepting glass in the green bin is an addition to the range of materials like paper, cardboard, plastic and metal that can already be easily recycled from home in the Leeds green bin.

The addition of glass as a material now collected from the kerbside for recycling means that Leeds is meeting the national Simper Recycling requirement ahead of the 2026 deadline.

The glass will be separated from household paper, cardboard, metal and plastic green bin recycling at HW Martin in Leeds. The glass is further sorted to remove waste ready for re-melting. The glass processing within Yorkshire, where the glass cullet is screened to remove non-glass items using magnets, optical sorters and vacuums before being melted at up to 1,600 degrees centigrade and the molten glass guided in to new jar and bottle moulds.

ENDS

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