The Plastic Postcode Lottery: How UK Councils Are Divided on Recycling

Two households, two recycling bins, two identical pieces of plastic and two completely different outcomes. One council collects it. The other sends it to landfill or incineration. The packaging is the same. The number inside the little triangle is the same. The only thing that's different is the postcode.

We’ve reviewed how 12 UK local authorities actually handle household plastic recycling. The findings suggest that for most of the seven plastic types stamped on everyday packaging, whether something gets recycled has almost nothing to do with the material itself, and almost everything to do with where you happen to live.

A Symbol That Was Never Meant for Consumers

The numbered triangle on plastic packaging, officially called a resin identification code, was introduced in 1988 by a US trade body, the Society of the Plastics Industry. Its job was to help sorting facilities identify which polymer a piece of plastic was made from. It was never designed to tell consumers what they could or couldn't put in their bin.

That distinction has mattered for decades, but the council research shows just how much it still matters today. Of the seven plastic types, only three, PET (code 1, found in drinks bottles), HDPE (code 2, milk and cleaning bottles) and PP (code 5, pots, tubs and trays), were accepted for kerbside collection by all 12 councils sampled. The remaining four types told a very different story: PVC (code 3) and the catch-all "Other" category (code 7) had no confirmed kerbside acceptance anywhere in the sample. Polystyrene (code 6) was accepted, even partially, by just one authority. And LDPE (code 4), the flexible plastic used in bags, film and wrapping, was accepted by only three of the twelve.

In short: fewer than half the plastic types most households encounter daily have anything close to a consistent national answer.

Key: ✓ = accepted, ✗ = explicitly rejected, — = not stated/unclear

The Same Number, Two Different Bins

The clearest illustration of the divide is what happens to flexible plastic film. Leeds, Cornwall and Fife all collect it at the kerbside. Bags, cling film, wrappers, bubble wrap and pet-food pouches all go in with the rest of the household recycling. Cross into Bristol, Manchester, Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast or several others in the sample, and the same items are routinely rejected, usually with the advice to take them to a supermarket collection point instead.

Polystyrene shows an even sharper split. Most councils in the sample reject it outright. Bristol, Cornwall, Sutton, Edinburgh and Belfast all explicitly rule out polystyrene or foam packaging. Westminster is the lone outlier, drawing a distinction within the category itself: a polystyrene yoghurt pot is collectable, but a polystyrene burger box is not. Same resin code, same triangle, different bin depending on the state in which it’s used.

Perhaps the most telling finding isn't about any single material, though. It's that several councils openly acknowledge the resin-code system doesn't really work for them. 

Westminster's own guidance states plainly that it isn't "particularly helpful" to think about plastic in terms of type, because they accept all type 1s and 2s but only a handful of type 5s and 6s.

 West Sussex makes a similar point, warning residents that the symbols on packaging are generic and may not reflect what their specific area can actually process.