Waste Management Editing and Proofreading Services

A load of recycling arrives at a sorting facility and is rejected. It is not that people did not try — they did, sincerely, hundreds of them, putting things in the green bin that they were fairly sure could be recycled. A greasy pizza box, a black plastic tray, a plastic bag full of correctly sorted material, a bottle with the lid on when the lid should be off, or off when it should be on. Every one of those decisions was made by somebody reading, or half-remembering, a leaflet.

We edit what waste and recycling operators and authorities produce — recycling instructions for bins, leaflets and websites, collection calendars and service change notices, contamination and rejected collection notices, bulky waste and special collection information, household waste site guidance and acceptance lists, business waste duty of care documentation, commercial service agreements and specifications, tender responses for collection contracts, permit and compliance documentation for facilities, community engagement and behaviour change campaigns, and performance and recycling rate reporting. Our editors work on the instructions that decide what ends up in the bin.

Recycling instructions are the highest-volume public writing a council or operator produces, and they fail by listing materials rather than resolving decisions. People do not stand at the bin wondering whether plastic is recyclable; they stand there holding one specific object about which they are genuinely unsure. We work through these so the guidance is organised around the items that actually cause contamination in this area's stream rather than around material categories, since a list beginning "plastics: yes" produces black trays and film in the container; so each instruction is a physical action rather than a property — rinse it, squash it, lid off and in the same bin, no bags — because "ensure items are clean" is a standard nobody can meet or check; so the reason is given in one short clause where it changes behaviour, given that people who know a bag of correctly sorted recycling gets rejected as a bag stop bagging it; so the genuinely uncertain items are named explicitly with a yes or a no, including the ones the answer is no for; so the consequence of contamination is stated at household level rather than as an abstraction about the recycling rate; and so the same wording appears on the bin sticker, the calendar and the website. Instructions written this way move the contamination rate, which no amount of encouragement does.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including contracts, performance data and campaign material. We are editors rather than waste, compliance or environmental advisers, and we offer no view on what should be collected, sorted or accepted. What we can do is answer the question somebody is holding at the bin.