Blue bin
Soft plastics recycling
Midlothian Council currently collects plastic pots and tubs alongside plastic bottles in your blue bin. We currently cannot collect soft plastics, such as crisp packets and cereal bags as part of this service as these types of materials cause problems for sorting equipment at traditional Materials Recycling Facilities.
Separate collections of these types of materials can, however, be sent to specialist sorting plants and some local retailers have started offering in-store collections of “soft plastics” as part of their obligations to recycle product packaging.
Soft plastics include:
- bread bags
- bags from dried goods such as cereal, pasta, rice, and pulses, etc
- crisp packets
- salad bags
- cling film and the clear film used to wrap meat, fish, fruit and vegetables
- pet food pouches
- baby food pouches
- biscuit wrappers
- sweet wrappers
- cheese wrap
- fruit and vegetable nets
- toilet roll and kitchen paper wrapping
Items should be clean and dry.
If you’re not sure if an item is 'soft plastic', a simple test is to scrunch it up. If it pings back, it’s probably soft plastic.
Plastic bottles, tubs, pots and trays should still go in your blue bin.