Residents in Torbay will soon find it easier to recycle with new resources from us and SWISCo to help everyone do the right thing.

As part of the new Right Stuff, Right Box campaign, letters will be going out to all Torbay residents from this week along with coloured stickers for boxes and a new bag for paper, all to make it as easy as possible for people to recycle as much as they can. In addition the campaign is being promoted on the side of bin lorries and across web, social media and the local press.

Please note though that because the scheme is being rolled out across all of Torbay - some 62,000 households – it will take a few weeks so you may not receive yours just yet.

Later in the year there are also plans to introduce opt-in, charged for garden waste collections for residents – a paper is going to Cabinet on 12 July.

Did you know it is six times quicker for household recycling staff to empty recycling boxes that have already been sorted by local residents than it is for them to empty boxes that have not been sorted?

Householders in the Bay will get:

A green sticker for one recycling box for the following materials:

• Plastic
• Tins/cans
• Aerosols
• Batteries (bagged)
• Mixed textiles (bagged)

An orange sticker for the other recycling box for the following materials:

• Cardboard
• Glass
• Oil (sealed)
• Small electricals

A new blue bag specifically for paper recycling. You can put most types of paper in the blue bag – newspapers, magazines, catalogues, shredded paper, white envelopes, letters, leaflets and junk mail, coloured paper, phone directories.

Brown paper and brown envelopes cannot go in your blue bag because they are recycled differently and will need to go in your orange box instead.

Residents will still be able to use their existing food caddy for food waste recycling.

Torbay Council wants to increase recycling to 50% and the new system to simplify household recycling is one of a number of steps SWISCo is taking towards this target. They have also invested in new Romaquip recycling vehicles, recruited more drivers and employed new Recycling Support Coordinators who will be speaking to members of the public about the new recycling scheme.

Matt Reeks, Managing Director of SWISCo, said: “We have tried to make our new colour coded system as easy as possible and we think it will help people to understand.

“It is so much quicker for our crews if the recycling has already been sorted correctly and means rounds can be collected more quickly, and more materials can be recycled.

“From a residents’ point of view, this also means less delays behind our trucks and also means we burn less diesel which lowers our carbon footprint.”

Jamie from the household waste and recycling team who is heading up the campaign said: “This will speed up the collections, help the public recycle more and help make the service more reliable.”

Mike Morey Cabinet Member for Environment Infrastructure and Culture said: “This is a great new initiative from SWISCo – like many local authorities it’s been a difficult time over the past couple of years with COVID and staff shortages, particularly drivers, but SWISCo have recruited a lot of extra staff and this new regime, along with the new recycling vehicles and our Recycling Support Coordinators, will help us all to get the right stuff in the right box and drive up recycling rates in Torbay.

“We need to do all we can to help our environment and tackle climate change and we must reduce, reuse and recycle as much as we possibly can.”

More information is on our website recycling pages.

The new system is being rolled out in a phased approach by household recycling rounds (there are 22 each day in Torbay) – please note the roll out will take several weeks.