A RECYCLING charity which “struggles daily” with fly-tipping has criticised a Salisbury estate agent after cardboard and rubbish with the agents’ name on it was left inside its recycling bin.

Recycling for Wiltshire Air Ambulance collects crisp packets, baby food pouches, and Tassimo, L’or and Kenco coffee pods in a container in the Tesco car park on Southampton Road.

The recycling is then collected by TerraCycle to be taken away.

The money they receive from TerraCycle is then donated to the Wiltshire Air Ambulance (WAA).

On Monday (February 18), Lesa Snook, one of the women who runs the recycling hub, went to the container to find cardboard packages and paper leaflets in the bin.

She explained that if anything is in the bin other than the pods and crisp packets when it is collectedby, TerraCycle they void the entire container.

Lesa added: “We struggle with this daily, and it is really annoying.

“People clean out their cars and leave their rubbish in our container, and it was especially bad at Christmas with people leaving loads of cardboard Amazon packages in there.

“TerraCycle would’ve voided the entire container, and then we would have had less money to donate the WAA.

“When we then contacted Northwood, they denied all knowledge of it, and actually tried to blame Hills [Waste Solutions] who collect their bins for them.

“They investigated it further and have now apologised and as a gesture of goodwill are donating £100 to the WAA.”

In a statement, Northwood said “it was a simple mistake”, and that they are “sorry.”

It added: “This was a genuine error.

A statement from Northwood said: “This was a genuine error born from good intentions. The recycling box had no signage on it at all, so we would have had no idea it was for WAA.

“It was mistakenly assumed it was a recycling box used by/for Tesco.

“We could have more easily placed the two empty boxes and magazines in our own general waste but always recycle wherever possible.

“As a local, family owned business we are utterly mortified at the suggestion of deliberate wrongdoing have sincerely apologised.

“As soon as we were alerted to our error, we issued an unreserved apology and made a donation to the WAA which we will continue to support as we have since we opened.”

“It was a simple mistake for which we are sorry.”

Recycling for WAA responded to the claim the boxes "had no signage at all" with this post on their Facebook page.

Salisbury Journal: A post on the group's Facebook pageA post on the group's Facebook page