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From North Yorkshire Council:
We are experiencing increasing levels of contamination in recycling collected at the kerbside from both domestic and commercial properties, resulting in increased costs to the council.  By running this campaign, we hope to remind residents of what can and can’t be recycled.

The attached postcard will be delivered by the Royal Mail week commencing 20 January, commercial customers will also be sent information reminding them of their terms and conditions surrounding recycling.

If a bin is found to be contaminated it won’t be emptied and the crews will tag the bin to let the resident know what the issue is.  It will be the resident’s responsibility to remove the contamination prior to the next scheduled collection.

If the bin is contaminated at the next visit an information letter will be sent to the householder detailing what can and can’t be recycled and notifying them that if the bin is contaminated a third time the recycling service may be removed.  As this policy hopes to educate rather than penalise, we hope that by providing residents with tags, letters and the postcard the incidences of service removal will be minimal, as it has been in other areas operating this policy.

A similar process will be implemented for communal properties, however we will first try to contact management companies to make them aware of the contamination, if management company details aren’t readily available we will send letters to all residents using the communal bins.