Green box

• glass bottles and jars
• newspapers and magazines
• office paper

Items are sorted manually in the collection van.

Each household can have up to two free green boxes (including the one initially provided), but if you need more again, they cost £5 each

Clothing/handbags/shoes can be put out for recycling with the green box as long as they are in a special red plastic bag: Freephone 0800 783 1957 if you need some of these.

Blue box

• Plastic bottles (not yoghurt pots etc); but not lids
• All cans and tins
• Envelopes
• Wrapping paper
• Card and cardboard
• Directories
• Clean aluminium foil

There is no need to separate items, as they are all tipped together into a special refuse lorry and sorted later by machine. If you flatten plastic bottles, they will not take up so much room; but it is not essential. Cardboard too large for the box can be stacked beside it and will not be treated as "side waste". Each household can have up to two free blue boxes (including the one intially provided), but if you need more again, they cost £5 each. Alternatively you can purchase a blue wheelie bin from the council (in either large or small size: each costs £20.

Below: giant bin used by collectors. The blue box and lilac-sack items are carefully tipped into this bin, and anything unsuitable removed. They then get tipped into a clean waste lorry that takes the contents to the Milton Keynes recycling plant.

 

Plastics seem to be causing the most confusion. Only plastic bottles can be put in the blue box.
See this Milton Keynes film

Other items such as yoghurt pots must NOT go in the blue box. So plastic items such as margarine tubs, ice cream containers, and yogurt pots still have to be taken to the Somerfield recycling bank.

Items that have no recycling triangle cannot be recycled. And at present Oxford City Council has no means of recycling carrier bags, polystyrene, clingfilm, toys or gadgets.

Note, however, that there is a carrier bag recycling box inside many shops, including Somerfield