Why can the lids be recycled on the plastic bottles?
The reason why we ask you to take the lids off your plastic drinks and milk bottles before putting the bottles in your blue bag for recycling is that the lids are made from a different type of plastic to the bottle. Mixing these with the bottles would cause contamination of the polymer type and therefore reduce both the quality and value of the material. This can also have implications on the intended end-use of the recycled material due to the contamination’s impact on end-product consistency. Some products are starting to use the same polymer types for their lids however it is not used by all manufacturers. Therefore we cannot currently accept lids as they could still contaminate the plastic we recycle.
