Red Sack Cardboard Recycling

Red Sacks On Four-Weekly Rural Paper Recycling Routes

If you are on one of the rural four-weekly paper recycling routes (blue-lidded wheeled bin), and you find a tag like the one shown on your bin handle, please read the instructions and look inside or next to the bin for a red sack.

We are trialling this as a system to return any brown cardboard you mistakenly put in your paper recycling collection.

Depending on the weather and local conditions, a red sack (like one of the two shown) containing your returned brown cardboard will either be left next to your paper bin or put inside it.

Please keep the red sack. You can use it to store brown cardboard before taking it to a Recycling Point or Household Waste & Recycling Centre.

Why No Brown Cardboard?

We cannot accept brown cardboard in any paper recycling collection or paper Recycling Points. The reason for this is that your paper recycling is all sent to a paper mill to be made into newsprint, which can be sold and recycled many more times. Because the paper mill has to make the newsprint to certain standards of whiteness, and does so without using environmentally damaging bleaches and brighteners, it cannot use brown cardboard or even brown envelopes. They can only take paper and white or grey card.

Brown cardboard can be taken to a cardboard Recycling Point or a Household Waste & Recycling Centre. Please flatten it to leave space for others to recycle.

Paper and Card You Can Recycle

Please see our paper recycling page for a full list of the wide range of paper and white or grey card you can recycle in Aberdeenshire.