Severe weather: waste collection catch-up

Waste collections in the Royal Borough are under way again today (Wednesday) after two days out of action because of the severe weather.

The crews are on the road again, working to a plan that will enable - weather permitting - all refuse (black bin waste) to be collected this week.

This will be achieved by:

• transferring all the recycling crews to refuse collection (black bins)
• suspending the recycling collections (blue bins etc) until next week and
• suspending the green waste collections.

This will mean an all-out attack on the black bin refuse collection with Monday and Wednesday's collections being done today; Tuesday and Thursday's collections on Thursday and Friday's on Friday. Obviously, all collections are subject to roads and footway conditions.

In this way after the Christmas break the crews can work to the published holiday schedule (including recycling collection).

Cllr Phill Bicknell, lead member for public protection, said that after the two days' enforced suspension of the service it was vital to focus on refuse collection as a priority.

He said: "We want to ensure that the household refuse collection is completed before Christmas and, with residents now having increased capacity in their blue recycling bins, we believe there should be plenty of space for all their Christmas recycling. If some homes have more recycling than their bins can cope with then they can hang on to it until the following week's collection and earn RecycleBank points or they can put it out as excess waste to be taken with the normal bin collection - although they won't earn points.

"We believe this is a really efficient way of catching up and we think residents will agree."

Residents whose collection was due on Monday and Tuesday should already have their bins black bins out (hold on to blue bins until next week). Those with collections on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday should put out their black bins on the usual day.

Public bring sites are open as usual and will be emptied before Christmas. The civic amenity site and the household waste and recycling centre at Braywick are also open today.

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