Torridge District Council News

17 Dec 2020

'Tis the season to recycle! [copy]

'Tis the season to recycle! [copy]: christmas collections

2020 has been a strange year with many ‘ups and downs’, but recycling in Torridge is certainly on the ‘up’ and that’s thanks to you! We'd like to thank everyone in Torridge for supporting the service over the last twelve months. The combined effort from our crews and residents across the district mean that we have managed to recycle over 50% of all the rubbish produced in the area this year.

But our crews will be taking a short break during the festive period and there will be no kerbside recycling collections on Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year’s Day. However, crews will be working normally on other days across the holiday period to collect any festive leftovers. Please check your collection dates on our online calendar as some of the refuse collection days will be a day or two later than usual as a result of the public holidays.

Also don't forget to make the most of our food waste collections as we want to recycle as much food waste as possible!

To accommodate the extra work over this period there will be no Garden Waste (Green wheelie bin) collections between Monday 21st December and Friday 1st January. Collections will restart on the normal scheduled day from 4th January. Bulky item collections will also be suspended during this period.

Lots of festive items can be fully recycled, including:

  • Plastic bottles, containers and tins (green box)
  • Foil trays (green box)
  • Glass bottles and jars (black box)
  • Christmas cards without glitter (brown bag)
  • Christmas card envelopes (brown bag)
  • Food waste, including turkey bones (green food caddies)
  • Cardboard (broken up or flattened) and must be placed in the brown bag. Each household can have two brown bags. To order a bag go to torridge.gov.uk/boxesandbags

There are some items which unfortunately cannot be recycled:

  • Large oversized boxes may be rejected unless broken into pieces and placed in the brown bags or alternatively these can be taken to one of the local Devon County recycling centres.
  • Items covered in glitter cannot unfortunately be recycled.
  • We can only accept brown wrapping paper due to the low-grade nature of standard wrapping paper.

Please remember that none of your waste will be sent to landfill! Any refuse that can’t be fully recycled gets sent to an energy from waste plant.

Councillor Chris Leather - Lead Member for Waste and Recycling said:

"This year has been a test for our crews and residents alike and with three bank holidays coming up there will be no let up. Thank you to all those people who have supported our crews and continued to recycle through this difficult time. Your kind messages and pictures have had a lasting effect on all members of the Waste and Recycling team. Don’t forget to ‘wash and squash’ your plastic bottles and cans as this helps our crews to collect double the amount of recycled materials on each round. Thank you. Have a Peaceful Christmas and a Happy New Year!"

More recycling info can be found on social media or our website @ torridge.gov.uk/recycleguide

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