Bring Bank

Types of Recycling Service   

Bring Banks

The bring bank scheme is open again from 6am Friday 24 April 2020.

Recycling collection containers located in car parks and on streets where the public can deposit recyclable materials. They are generally located where the public reside, are likely to visit for other purposes or use when passing, for example shopping or travelling to or from work.

A kerbside recycling service

Collects recyclable materials from individual households and, due to the convenience of this service, participation by the householder is generally high resulting in significantly higher volumes and quality of recyclable materials being collected. Some local authorities provide kerbside recycling collections; please contact your local authority to check if this service is provided in your area. 

Department of Infrastructure Bring Bank Recycling Scheme 

Working with our contractor Middle Park Recycling Ltd, the Department operates a recycling collection service from Bring Banks accessible to the public located across the Island. These locations include the Island’s four Civic Amenity sites, local authority land, government land and private land with the agreement of the owner. Additionally the Department collects paper from various primary and secondary schools. 

Please view our up-to-date list of locations accessible to the public.

Materials collected 

• Newspapers, Magazines and grey card
  Quality paper is collected and shipped to the UK for recycling into newsprint by a paper mill operated by UPM Kymmene based in North Wales, an internationally respected company with which the Department has a long standing working relationship and agreement for acceptance of our paper. UPM Kymmene accepts both the paper collected from the Department’s scheme and that collected from the kerbside collections operated by Douglas Borough Council. Paper accepted can include office grade paper, shredded paper, greetings cards (but not plastic, highly coated or those containing batteries) and household telephone directories. However, brown paper, brown card and corrugated cardboard cannot be accepted and the presence of this material, even in small quantities, can mean rejection of the entire load when delivered to the paper mill. Unfortunately brown card includes certain cereal cartons such as Weetabix which have now changed from using grey to brown packaging. Separate cardboard collections can be made at the Southern, Eastern and Western Civic Amenity sites.

• Glass
  Rinsed coloured and clear glass  bottles and jars are collected and delivered to Corlett’s Building Materials of Ballaharra , St Johns, where the glass is processed to produce ‘Eco-sand’ which is used as a preferred substitute for quarried sand in certain building applications.
  Metal tops can be left on bottles and jars but plastic tops should be removed and disposed of elsewhere.
  
  
• Cans and aluminium foil
  Clean (rinsed) drinks and food cans and clean aluminium foil are collected and mechanically processed to separate steel from aluminium cans. The material is then baled and shipped to the UK where the steel element enters the world market for ferrous scrap and the aluminium is shipped to Novelis in Warrington, Cheshire where aluminium ingots are produced which are then used to manufacture more cans.
  Please do not place ‘foil’ pet food pouches, crisp packets etc. in the recycling bins. These items are actually a coated plastic. Food and drinks cans need to be empty and rinsed to prevent contamination and to avoid attracting unwanted pests such as vermin and wasps.
  
  
• Plastic Bottles
  The Department collects mixed plastic bottles from the Eastern and Southern Civic Amenity sites. These are baled and shipped to Jayplas, Derbyshire for sorting into their differing plastic types and processing into pellets/ flakes used for production of other plastic items.
  Other household plastics including pots, tubs, trays and plastic film are not collected since many are either non-recyclable or of such poor quality or contain excessive food contamination that they have no end market for recycling. The Department considers that these items are best disposed of in your household bin to be incinerated at our Energy from Waste facility where they will help to generate electricity.
  We ask that the tops are taken off bottles to allow the safe handling of the material when baled for shipment. Because many plastic bottles are particularly strong they do not rupture when compressed (at great pressure) during baling and can then spring back causing the bale to effectively explode.
  
  
• Household batteries.
  All Isle of Man Co-Op stores on the Island have facilities for collecting used household batteries along with Andreas, Jurby, Ballaugh and Sulby stores. All Civic Amenity sites have collection bins.
  Please remove any ‘tails’ of wiring from battery packs since these may cause a risk of fire.

Statistics on weights of these materials collected for recycling can be found on the Statistics for recycling webpage.Textile bring banks are operated privately on behalf of charities and those located at bring bank sites serviced by the Department have been included on the site list accessible above.

Polite request 

At particularly busy periods you may occasionally find that the bring banks are full to capacity. In such circumstances please try and use a nearby facility or take your recycling back with you. Leaving it on the ground adjacent to the site can be both dangerous to other users and likely to cause environmental pollution, for example where plastic bags may blow away. Such action may be considered as illegal fly tipping. 

Please dispose of unwanted containers (boxes/carrier bags) considerately or better still take them with you for re-use. Please DO NOT tie carrier bags to the recycling bins.