Lancaster city council is switching to alternative weekly waste and recycling collections, as part of its efforts to reduce emissions after declaring a “climate emergency” in 2019.
From 6 September, the council will introduce ‘route optimisation’ which will see the councils’ in-house crews using more direct and “environmentally friendly” routes on collection rounds.
When the changes take place, residents will see the day of their collection change, and be asked to put out residual waste and recycling on alternate weeks, rather than together.
This means that non-recyclable household waste will go out one week, with recycling boxes and garden waste the following week.
Currently both residual and recycling are collected fortnightly.
Disruption
To allow for the switch, the council said there will be a disruption to the service for a “short period of time”.
During the first two-week collection cycle, the majority of residents will be asked to hold on to certain types of waste for longer than the usual fortnight until collections return to normal.
During this time, the council has advised excess general household waste be stored in black bin bags and put out for collection at the side of grey wheeled bins on the next new collection day.
Similarly, excess recyclables can be stored in carrier bags or other containers and placed alongside recycling containers to await collection.
Route optimisation
The route optimisation method will see the total distance covered by crews each fortnight to reduce by between 15% and 20%.
This equates to a reduction of 1600 miles in comparison to the distance the crews currently need to cover.
New calendars advising residents of their revised collection dates up to the end of August 2022 will be sent out in coming weeks.
Climate emergency
The council declared a climate change emergency in January 2019.
Following this, it committed to implementing a series of recommendations relating to waste which include using zero single use plastic on any of its premises and reducing the subscription fee for the garden waste collection service (see letsrecycle.com).
Lancaster city council serves a population of approximately 150,000 and recorded a recycling rate of 36.5% in 2019/20.
The post Lancaster in collections shake-up to reduce emissions appeared first on letsrecycle.com.
Source: letsrecycle.com Waste Managment
