Mountains of wrapping paper, endless packaging and mounds of leftover food – there is no doubt Christmas puts strain on your rubbish and recycling bins.
But what happens to all of that waste from the festive season that gets thrown away?
Moray Council has a team of 70 working almost constantly through Christmas and New Year, emptying up to 5,000 bins a day.
The volume squashed inside increases to such an extent that crews are taken off collecting garden and food waste for two weeks to cope with the increase elsewhere.
The Press and Journal was granted access to Moray Council’s Moycroft waste depot in Elgin to find out more about the mountain of rubbish collected at Christmas.
Can you recycle wrapping paper?
Christmas rubbish rush starts early
Living rooms covered with torn-up wrapping paper, packaging from gadgets and leftovers from dinner fill buckets on Christmas Day – prompting many headaches about what exactly you can recycle.
However, the big rush on bins starts more than a month in advance with paper and cardboard filling up recycling collections.
Mike Neary, Moray Council’s waste manager, explained the Covid pandemic amid a longer-term shift to online shopping had contributed to the increase in packaging.
Statistics from the authority shows 1,442 tonnes of kerbside recycling was collected in December 2019 and January 2020 – 36% higher than the 1,059 tonnes collected the following two months in February and March 2020.
Mr Neary said: “It gets pretty full on at Christmas. People are always getting deliveries at home these days, so the packaging in the bins starts to arrive in early December.
“But we also find people just clearing out all their old stuff before Christmas too, like old toys – one year someone in Buckie got rid of five mountain bikes still in good condition.
“It all adds pressure on the recycling centres. At our unmanned facilities, which are open 24/7, the skips there can get so full of cardboard it’s hard to get to them, let alone empty them – it’s just manic.”
Since November 2020 charity Moray Reach Out has been operating from the Moycroft depot in Elgin.
The organisation aims to support vulnerable adults into employment by giving them skills they use in working environments.
Up to 50 places are run with crews sorting out plastics from metal to ensure the right materials are recycled.
The group has urged people to think carefully about what they place in their household bins due to their staff having to handle potentially dangerous items manually.
Changing recycling behaviours
Moray Council had the fourth highest recycling rate in 2020 with 54.9% of rubbish kept out of landfill – behind only Angus, East Renfrewshire and South Ayrshire in the national Sepa charts.
However, while promoting recycling items to ensure they can be used again – bosses are also keen to ensure attitudes are also changed to eradicate unwanted goods.
Mr Neary added: “We all do it with food at Christmas, we have eyes bigger than our bellies.
“There’s undoubtedly a rise in food waste at Christmas but it’s hard to quantify because we measure it garden waste, which obviously reduces.
“In terms of our messaging we always promote ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ – but it should probably be ‘eliminate’ before we even reduce.
“Everything we do is directly connected to consumer behaviour, whether it’s leftover food, packaging from online orders, plastic bottles instead of using reusable ones.”
