Plastics such as plastic bags, confectionary wrappers, foil lined packaging, plastic film, bubble wrap, food wrapping, fruit and vegetable net bags and more can now be placed in the blue lidded recycling bin (or red box/bag) for fortnightly collection.

Once collected, the waste goes to Sherbourne Recycling, a materials recycling facility (MRF) in Coventry and goes through a sorting process using the latest AI robotic equipment to separate the ‘commingled’ collections.

This has been a great step forward for everyone in Warwick District Council in recycling plastic - the process has been successfully implemented in waste collection.

Greg Paradowski, technical and operations director at Sherbourne Recycling, said: “The FlexCollect project was a significant piece of work, and it’s a real privilege to have contributed so impact fully to the resulting report alongside our partner authority, Warwick District Council who played a vital role. As one of the world’s most advanced MRFs, our site was used as part of the trial programme, specifically to identify baseline data for flexible plastic recovery in commingled collections.

Councillor Will Roberts, Portfolio Holder for Neighbourhood, said: “It was fantastic to be selected as the first Council in Warwickshire for this recycling scheme, which helped to reduce the amount of household waste going into the grey bin.” 

“Our partnership with and investment in Sherbourne Recycling continues to bring value to our residents, and we’re very grateful to the team there and at the Flexible Plastic Fund for enabling this new recycling scheme to happen.”

We want to say a big thank you to everyone for taking part and for embracing the change in waste collection. Our recycling rate average has gone from 53% in 23/24 to currently 61.4% in 25/26, which is one of the highest in England. Warwick District Council’s overall waste percentage has decreased by 5.7%.