Recycle Week: Cheltenham is joining the ‘2025 Rescue Me! Recycle’ campaign

This Recycle Week, Recycle Now and Cheltenham Borough Council are proud to support the ‘Rescue Me! Recycle’ campaign.

The campaign continues to shine a spotlight on missed capture items that too often end up in the rubbish bin but can, and should, be recycled.

Following the success of last year’s campaign, ‘Rescue Me! Recycle’ returns with three new characters joining the recycling mission - shampoo bottles, foil and toothpaste tubes.

The three new items join the list from last year, trigger sprays, aerosols, yoghurt pots, aftershave and perfume bottles and toilet roll tubes.

Here in Cheltenham, we are putting missed capture items front and centre. The council will be supporting Recycle Week by sharing a number of helpful tips and advice across its social media channels.

Cllr Paul Baker, cabinet member for waste, recycling, and green open spaces, said: “Cheltenham is making great strides in recycling. We are already trialling flexible plastics in some areas of Cheltenham, and we are looking at cartons too, which are currently only recycled at some bring banks. By rescuing those missed items, we can make our recycling efforts even more impactful. Let’s keep up the great work and make our town’s recycling better than ever before!”

Catherine David, chief executive of WRAP, said: “Recycle Week continues to be a powerful moment to inspire action across the UK, and this year’s ‘Rescue Me! Recycle’ campaign is no exception. By highlighting everyday items like shampoo bottles, foil, and toothpaste tubes—things we often overlook—we’re helping people see the real impact of small changes. Thanks to innovation and collaboration, more of these items can now be recycled than ever before. Together with local authorities and communities, we’re making it easier to do the right thing and keep valuable materials in use. Let’s rescue these items from the rubbish and give them a second life.”

Top tips for recycling in Cheltenham:

• No broken glass in your recycling box. Broken glass is dangerous and poses a risk to you and our operatives collecting and emptying recycling boxes. Small pieces of broken glass should be wrapped carefully and placed into your refuse bin. Large pieces of broken glass should be taken to your nearest county council household recycling centre
• If you have space, please use one green recycling box for glass and another for paper. If you do not have room for an additional recycling box, please put your glass in a carrier bag sized plastic bag and put this in your recycling box next to the paper
• All brown paper must be put into your blue bag 
• Wash and squash for extra room, and recycle your plastic pots, tubs and trays in your green recycling box
• Give your empty drink cans a second try and recycle them at the kerbside in your green box
• Make sure to flatten and tear up your cardboard boxes and recycle them in your blue bag.

Residents are being encouraged to recycle more shampoo bottles and foil. Other items include, cleaning product bottles, aerosols, yoghurt pots, aftershave and perfume bottles, toilet roll tubes, plastic toiletry bottles and food tins.

If toothpaste tubes are not yet collected at kerbside in your area, use the Recycle Now Locator Tool to find your nearest recycling point. Alternatively, many Boots stores across the UK accept toothpaste tubes and other hard-to-recycle items through their Recycle at Boots scheme, where you can even earn Advantage Card points for participating.

Recycling doesn’t have to be confusing. For more information about recycling in Cheltenham please visit our web pages.

Find out more about Recycle Week.  

---

For press enquiries contact: communications by email at [email protected] or telephone 01242 264231.

Notes to editors

Click here to download Recycle Week images

About Recycle Week: 

First staged in 2004, Recycle Week is now the UK’s largest national annual recycling campaign. It’s a week where citizens, media, local governments, and brands come together to meet one goal; to galvanise everyone into recycling more of the right things, more often

About Recycle Now: 

For more than twenty years, Recycle Now has encouraged and motivated citizens to recycle more things, more often, from around the home. Using ground-breaking research and behaviour change science, we develop interventions and campaigns to motivate citizens to change their behaviour. Recycle Now is the citizen facing recycling campaign of climate action NGO WRAP.