Tariq Mahmood, Keep Blackburn Tidy, Sally Booth, BwD Education Recycling Officer, Janet Pearce Keep Darwen Tidy with BwDs Maggie Holt
Published Wednesday 8 July 2020 at 13:55
Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council’s new blue bins for clean cardboard and paper will start to be emptied within weeks.
More than 60,000 new bins and reusable bags are being delivered right across the borough to help improve the borough’s recycling rates.
The council asked residents to hold off using the new bins until they received an updated waste calendar.
These are now set to start being delivered in time for the first collections to commence, in some areas, from the first week of August.
Councillor Jim Smith, Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council’s Executive Member for Environment said:
Our crews are working really hard on the deliveries and to schedule – which is exceptional given the current circumstances.
The new bins and collections will help save around £80,000 of Council Tax each month and so we wanted to be able to start emptying them as soon as we possibly could.
We are one of only a very few councils which still collected recycling all mixed in one bin and hardly any recycling mills will now except it like that.
Our residents have also told us that recycling can often be confusing and we know similar schemes have worked really well across the country and in neighbouring towns.
Currently, only around 30% of waste is recycled in Blackburn with Darwen and that figure has fallen further at periods during lockdown when the amount of rubbish collected from homes has soared.
Councillor Smith added:
We want to be one of the best places in the UK for recycling and schemes like this will help push us to our target of recycling 50% of waste by 2025.
The roll out of the new blue bins is part of our concerted effort to really make a change and we’ve also launched a new website – recyclebwd.org – to help residents do their bit.
We know this is something we can’t do alone – it needs to be a real team effort right across our borough.
The new blue bins will be for clean cardboard and paper while the grey bins will be used for clean glass, plastic bottle, tubs, jars, tins and cans only.
Plastic bags can’t be put in the grey or blue bins and must be put in the burgundy one.
A reusable blue bag is being made available for those who already use bags and sacks for recycling and residents who don’t have space for the new bin.
The new waste calendars will include the date for the last collection of the grey bin – when it can still contain cardboard and paper.
The council is asking all residents to put their grey bins out to be emptied on that day – even if they aren’t full.
For a full A-Z list of what goes where and for tips on recycling, click here.