Explainer: What Severn's New Recycling Rules Mean for Your Kerbside Bin

Most of us do the recycling on autopilot: tip the box, rinse the jar, hope for the best. Severn's updated kerbside rules are an attempt to take the guesswork out of it, and to stop good material being rejected at the depot because it turned up mixed with the wrong things.

The short version: less to remember, stricter sorting, and a clearer set of consequences when a container arrives contaminated. Here is how it works in practice, and what it means for the bin you put out this week.

What has actually changed

The biggest shift is that sorting now works by material rather than by habit. Paper and card travel together. Rigid plastics, cans, tins and foil go together, rinsed and loose rather than bagged. Glass stays separate, because broken glass ruins the value of everything else in the same load.

Crews also run a single pass per street. Every container has to be out at the same time, usually the night before or before the time printed on your collection calendar, rather than being put out when you hear the truck. Anything missed waits for the next scheduled visit for that material, so a late bin can mean a fortnight's wait.

Food waste continues in its own caddy, and general waste is unchanged. Garden waste still needs a paid bin or a trip to the household recycling centre.

What goes in the recycling now

Paper and card — newspapers, magazines, junk mail, envelopes with windows, cereal boxes, flattened cardboard. Keep it dry; wet paper is pulp before it ever reaches the plant.
Rigid plastics — drink bottles, milk bottles, shampoo bottles, yoghurt pots, margarine tubs, fruit punnets and ready-meal trays. Rinse them and squash bottles to save space.
Metal — food and drink cans, pet food tins, empty aerosol cans, and clean foil or foil trays.
Glass — bottles and jars only, rinsed, with lids removed. The lids can go in with the metals.
Food waste — cooked and uncooked food, tea bags, coffee grounds, plate scrapings and the paper liners that come with the caddy.

Labels and a bit of sticky residue are fine. A quick swill is enough; nobody is expecting restaurant standards.

What still has to stay out

This is where most contamination comes from, and it is rarely deliberate. The usual culprits:

Soft plastics — carrier bags, bread bags, crisp packets, film, bubble wrap. Take these to a supermarket front-of-store collection point if one near you accepts them.
Black plastic trays, which sorting equipment often cannot detect, along with polystyrene and expanded foam.
Textiles, shoes and bedding — charity banks or clothing collection points, not the kerbside bin.
Batteries, vapes and small electricals. These are a genuine fire risk in collection vehicles and at the depot, and belong at a shop collection point or the tip.
Pyrex, drinking glasses, mirrors, ceramics and window glass. They look like glass, but they melt at different temperatures and contaminate the glass stream.
Nappies, wet wipes, sanitary products and pet waste — general waste, always.
Greasy pizza boxes. Tear off the clean lid for recycling and bin the oily base.

What contamination actually costs you

Contamination simply means anything in a container that the sorting plant cannot process or sell. Small amounts are tolerated, but a load with too much of the wrong material gets rejected, and rejected recycling usually ends up being burned or buried. That is the whole point of the stricter rules.

In practice, the response escalates rather than jumping straight to a penalty:

A tag or sticker. The crew leaves the container with a note explaining what was wrong, and may still empty it as a one-off.
An unemptied container. Repeat offenders find the bin left behind with the reason attached. Fix the problem before the next collection.
A letter, and where the rules allow, a charge. Persistent contamination can mean a formal warning, a paid-for return visit, or the container being withdrawn. If a letter arrives, ring the waste team; most councils would rather clear up a misunderstanding than send another truck.

If a bin is genuinely hard to manage, say so early. Assisted collections exist for households where nobody can move a container to the kerb, and extra capacity is usually available for medical needs or a baby in nappies. Ask before you start sneaking bags into a neighbour's bin.

If your bin was not emptied

Read the tag before you do anything else; the answer is usually written on it. Then report it within the council's stated window, which is often 48 hours, and fix the problem before putting the container out again. Re-presenting the same contaminated bin simply produces the same result.

Flats and shared buildings usually have different arrangements, so check with whoever manages the bins rather than assuming the household rules apply. Landlords and managing agents are responsible for making sure the right containers and the right information reach the people living there.

One legal point worth knowing: business waste cannot go into a domestic bin. If you run a trade from home and you are unsure whether your rubbish counts as household or commercial, ask the council's waste team before you put it out.

A five-minute audit before bin day

Check the collection calendar for your street and set a reminder for the night before. Schedules shift around bank holidays.
Put containers out the night before, handles facing the road, somewhere the crew can see them.
Keep paper dry. A weighted lid or a lidded box makes a real difference in a wet week.
Rinse jars and tins, take lids off glass, and shake out anything sloppy.
When you are unsure about an item, check the council's A–Z rather than guessing. One uncertain item in general waste beats a rejected load.
Tell the household. Flatmates, children and weekend visitors are the most common source of a rogue item.