With the bank holidays on Thursday and Friday, to help avoid disruption as bunting is widely expected, some councils in England and Wales have urged residents not to put decorations up until later in the day to enable crews to access collection routes without difficulty. Referencing the displays, Southend-on-Sea city council has warned it will “remove them without notice” if they block refuse crews.
Several councils with collections on a Thursday are instead moving them to Saturday, with Friday collections moving to Monday.
These include Buckinghamshire council, Somerset Waste Partnership, the Royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, London boroughs such as Hounslow, and East Devon council.
Services will then return to normal the following week.
Parties
With up to 10 million people set to attend street parties this weekend, councils continuing to operate collections could be faced with access issues.
Rhondda Cynon Taf council added that it will be revising its collection routes to accommodate for street celebrations, and has also asked its residents to put the decorations up later in the day to allow for morning collections without disruption.
Others have begun communications with residents about what to do with things such as bunting, and advice on how to produce less waste.
Southend-on-Sea advised that card and paper bunting can be recycled in the card/paper box, with fabric buntings able to go in the white textile sacks. It also warned that plastic bunting is unrecyclable.
Recycling
The Somerset Waste Partnership, which is also pushing back collections a day, also urged residents to think about recycling during their celebrations.
The tips included avoiding plastic and single-use items as well as providing a separate bag for recycling and providing food based on attendees to minimise food waste.
‘Necessary adjustments’
Some of the changes made by councils to collection days have been made esaier by the move to a four-day week. Speaking with letsrecycle.com, John Coates, LARAC’s head of external affairs, told letsrecycle.com that many councils have adopted an all-year round four-day week collection model to minimise any disruption that may be caused by a holiday.
“Each collection authority will make the necessary adjustments to their normal collection schedule to account for the extra bank holiday. This may entail collections happening on one of the bank holiday days or over the weekend.”
Mr Coates said: “Those councils working a four-day week will probably use the non-working day next week. As councils are well used to planning for these occasions, as happens over the Christmas period, we have no worries that residents will be disrupted.”
No changes
Many other councils are planning to carry out their collections as usual, urging their residents to recycle any additional waste produced during the street celebrations. Dorset, the London borough of Hillingdon, North Somerset , Leicester and Rhondda Cynon Taf councils are some of the authorities that have announced no changes to their collection days.
Suffolk
HWRCs are expected to generally operate as normal. Hilary Garlick from Suffolk county council told letsrecycle.com that the household waste and recycling centres it operates are going to stay open as usual. “These are only closed on Christmas Day,” she added.
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