Recycle Week 2026 – Tewkesbury Borough joins the call to rescue your recyclables
Posted on: 14 September 2026
This year, Tewkesbury Borough Council are proud to support Recycle Week (14 – 20 September) which shows people how their recycling truly makes a difference, and that it’s worth doing properly.
Each year, billions of items that could be recycled are put in the wrong bins around the UK. Each item that is recycled correctly helps save energy and keeps valuable materials in circulation to be used again and again.
To help bring this to life, the Recycle Week campaign stars a cast of recyclable characters, whose stories show how valuable they are, and why they’re worth rescuing from the rubbish. The lineup includes:
• Shampers the shampoo bottle – who can be recycled into a plastic garden chair
• Spritz the fragrance bottle – who could come back as a champagne bottle
• Rolly the toilet roll tube – who can be turned into a notebook
• Deo the aerosol – who could become part of a bike
• Trigger the cleaning spray bottle – who can be recycled again into a new spray bottle
• Yogi the yoghurt pot – who can come back as another yoghurt pot
• Ally the kitchen foil – who can be recycled into part of a car engine.
And new for this year, Neil the banana peel who can be used to create green energy, and be recycled into fertiliser.
Tewkesbury Borough Council is supporting Recycle Week and has shared some top tips for recycling in your blue bin:
• Pop your clean card and cardboard in your bin, but please no dirty cardboard like takeaway pizza boxes or burger cartons
• Wash and squash your plastics if you can, as it saves space, but please no soft plastic wrappers, bags or items that have batteries like vapes
• If your metal contained food, please put the leftovers in your food bin and give the item a quick rinse if you can, and don’t forget scrunch the aluminium foil into a ball.
Waste Minister Emma Hardy said: “I fully support Recycle Week and its aim to help people recycle more of the right things, more often.
“This government is making recycling simpler and more consistent by ending the postcode lottery for recycling services and ensuring households can recycle the same core materials wherever they live.
“This Recycle Week, I encourage everyone to check the Recycle Now Locator see what can be recycled in their area and help keep more valuable materials in use for longer.”
Catherine David, CEO, WRAP said: “Recycling is one of the easiest ways we can all help to divert millions of tonnes of waste from landfill and incineration, conserve scarce natural resources and cut carbon emissions. Each year millions of shampoo bottles, aluminium foil, toothpaste tubes and other recycling are binned when they could be recycled, so this Recycle Week we’re asking people to be a hero at home and rescue more recycling. Together with local authorities and communities, we’re making it easier to keep these valuable materials in use and give our recycling a second life.”
Cllr Murray Stewart, Lead Member for Environmental Services said: “Every item recycled correctly is a valuable resource kept in circulation rather than being lost as waste. During Recycle Week, we’re encouraging residents across Tewkesbury Borough to become recycling heroes at home by taking a fresh look at what they throw away and rescuing more recyclable items from their bins. Waste Wizard is a good tool which makes recycling simple – it gives instant guidance to help residents recycle with confidence.”
Visit Waste Wizard: gloucestershirerecycles.com/waste-wizard or to find out more about Recycle Week this year, visit: recyclenow.com/recycle-week-2026
