The collection of household garden waste by Cheshire East Council will again be suspended during the winter period to save taxpayers money.
Due to the seasonal decline in demand, the collection of green bins will be suspended from the week beginning Sunday 6th December.
Following an outcry from local residents over the decision to shut down the garden waste collection service for four months two years ago, Cheshire East Council decided to reduce the length of the suspension last winter.
This winter the garden waste collections will again be suspended for 10 weeks, with the service resuming the week beginning Sunday 14th February 2016.
As garden bins are collected every fortnight, residents are being urged to check the online calendar for your last collection of 2015 and your first collection of 2016.
Should any residents need to dispose of green waste during this period, they can use the household-recycling centres around the Borough. The nearest household recycling centres in Congleton, Knutsford and Macclesfield are open seven days a week throughout the year, with the exception of Christmas Day.
Cheshire East Council is also urging residents to leave their recyclable materials loose in their silver bins.
A Council spokesperson said "Recyclable materials put inside other items such as plastic bags, boxes or tubs are difficult for our contractor UPM to recycle. Such materials are rejected and not recycled. To ensure that all the materials in your silver bin are recycled please put them in your bin loose.
"Cheshire East and its residents have worked hard to reduce the levels of non recyclable materials (contamination) in recycling collections. We are already one of the top ten performing unitary authorities in the country and by working together we will continue to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill.
"Make sure your silver bin is emptied by leaving all your recycled materials loose."
If the Council can't empty your bin because of what is in it, they will place a long orange sticker on the bin explaining why they have not emptied it.
Comments
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That is twelve weeks.
green gone .. well its a toss up between silver or black then ! ( joking !! )
There are still loads of leaves yet to fall from the trees, and these will more than fill a wheelie bin, so we will have to make extra vehicle journeys to take green waste to the tip. Hardly a "Green" decision! Surely collections should continue until mid December at least?
Our next collection will be in 12 weeks (3 months!) not the 10 weeks suggested.
In recent weeks I have seen fly tipping all around the area on quiet lanes, lay bys, playing fields etc. It is something that I absolutely loathe but I cannot understand why the council doesn't make the disposal of waste - of all descriptions - as simple as possible in order to reduce this menace. Presumably it is cheaper to accept the waste in the first place than to have to clear up fly tipping and then deal with it?
If your recycled waste is 'clean' (which means rinsing out bottles, tins and plastic and foil containers if contaminated with food), then surely it is easy for you to either tip the loose waste into the silver bin from the plastic bag? It really isn't a huge effort, and if it reduces the cost of recycling from a tax payer;s perspective, surely it's a small price to pay? As you say, Marc, 'how hard is it to rip a plastic bag?' If each household does their little bit to help protect/ save the environment then, collectively, we can make a sizable difference, no?
I may be retired but i aint spending what bit of life i have left washing rubbish and bins.
Your post saddens me. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who share your view. I lived in British Columbia, Canada, for seven years until 2003 when I returned to this area, where I was brought up. I remember when I moved to Canada being astounded that residents of the small mountain community where I lived took recycling so seriously. It was common and accepted practice to sort ( and, if necessary, clean) paper, cardboard, glass and plastic within your own household and then drive it (weekly, or perhaps fortnightly) to a local recycling depot where you would place the sorted waste in the respective areas. Other organic waste was composted in back gardens. There was very little 'household refuse' to collect.
No one questioned this or complained even when the trip required driving on treacherously snowy roads throughout the long winters. At that time, here in the UK everyone just dumped all their waste in one dustbin and expected it to be removed by the bin men without giving much thought as to where that waste ended up. We all know it ended up in massive, toxic holes in the ground. At that time (and now), the population of the UK is twice that of the population of Canada. The geographic footprint of the UK is a fraction of that of Canada.
So why did and do the Canadians do this? They did it because they really care about the environment. They care about the world that they leave their children to inherit. They have a measure of the bigger picture and they recognise that a small inconvenience is worth it, if it means their children and their children's children will inherit a world that is less toxic and tarnished as a result of our selfishness and laziness. Although that attitude was initially alien to me, coming from the UK, I embraced it pretty quickly. It made sense. Especially when I gave birth to a child of my own.
So, if your time in retirement is too precious to invest a little effort to improve the world we leave to our successors, then that is your choice. It's not really about taxes, though, is it? Perhaps we should be grateful that Cheshire East haven't adopted the Canadian recycling model and asked us to separate paper/ cardboard/ glass and plastic and take it ourselves to a local recycling plant. When you think of it that way, you comment, 'The only thing we don't do is put it in the wagon for them' looks slightly ridiculous, doesn't it?
Food for thought.