Crack Easter recycling – waste and recycling collections for 2025

Easter is a time for indulging in chocolate eggs and other delicious things, but the treats we enjoy at this time of year bring more than their fair share of rubbish. The good news is that you can cut down on waste by choosing Easter eggs that come in less packaging and have a waste-free Easter by recycling as much as possible.

What you can recycle this Easter

Scrunch aluminium foil from Easter eggs into a ball and recycle these in your green box. If the foil springs back open when scrunched, this means it’s laminated and should go in your general rubbish bin.

Cardboard boxes and plastic trays can go in your kerbside recycling for collection; please flatten them to save space.

Easter cards and envelopes can be recycled at home in your kerbside recycling; if they have glitter or foil they can be recycled at Cheltenham’s Cobalt Unit or put in general waste.

Leftover Easter food can be frozen and used at a later date or made into more delicious meals. Visit Love Food Hate Waste for recipe ideas.
Any inedible food waste such as cabbage stalks can go into your food caddy or fed to pets.

Soft plastic-wrapping for hot cross buns can be recycled at local supermarkets along with plastic bags. The council is trialling a kerbside recycling service for flexible plastic wrappings and bags in parts of the borough, and we hope to roll this out to include even more households in the future.

Rescheduled waste and recycling collections over Easter

Crews will be working on Good Friday so collections will take place as normal on that day. No collections will be made on Easter Monday; collections that week will be a day later than usual.
Crews will be working up to and including Saturday 26 April to complete the catch-up. All collections will be back to normal from week commencing Monday 28 April.

Please note that in some areas refuse and recycling collections take place as early as 7am so please have your bins, boxes, bags and caddies presented in good time.

Karen Watson, environmental partnerships manager, said: “This Easter, please remember to recycle your Easter egg packaging, including cardboard and foil, to help reduce waste in refuse bins. We appreciate the effort residents put into recycling—it really does make a difference. Properly sorting recycling helps our crews work more efficiently, allowing us to collect even more.”

Early May bank holiday

For information regarding other bank holidays in 2025 visit the council’s website, and find out more about waste and recycling.

LitterLotto is an exciting new initiative to help everyone easily recycle their waste using their kerbside collections - as well as clean up litter around the borough. The app also offers automatic bin day reminders if residents turn on notifications to help everyone to stay on top of their waste and recycling.

LitterLotto is free to download from the Google Play and Apple App stores. Or search for ‘LitterLotto.’ More information, including FAQs, is available on the council’s website.

For press enquiries contact:  communications team, email [email protected] or telephone 01242 264231.