After delivering over 70,000 wheelie bins to thousands of households, the roll out of the new recycling service in East Cambridgeshire is now complete.

Residents across the district are now taking advantage of an enhanced recycling service which involves:

• A blue lidded wheeled bin recycling collection, including paper, glass, food & drinks cans, plastic bottles & hard plastic food containers, cartons and cardboard. This will be collected fortnightly.
• A green lidded wheeled bin collection for garden and food waste. This will also be collected fortnightly.

Kevin Ellis, Recycling and Waste Champion at East Cambridgeshire District Council, said: "We would like to thank everyone in East Cambridgeshire for taking to the new recycling service with such enthusiasm. While we won’t have official figures until January, it is clear that the amount of recycling households are doing across the district has risen while the weight of rubbish put out in black sacks has fallen. This has been a tremendous effort and we should all be very proud of the change in performance.

"Obviously such a large scale roll out of a new service can lead to minor teething problems so we would especially like to thank those people who experienced difficulties for their patience. I also know there has been a dedicated team at the District Council who have worked incredibly hard to ensure that residents have been able to switch over to the new recycling service as easily as possible. They have often gone way beyond what is expected of them.

"We now have a first rate recycling service which we believe will help our recycling rate. We have made a good start but we cannot afford to be complacent. The challenge for us all is to constantly look at we are about to throw away and ask ourselves if that item should be recycled. If we continue to do that then the results can only ever be positive."

Refuse in black sacks continues to be collected weekly with the annual supply of a household’s black sacks delivered with the new wheelie bins.

These changes are possible after East Cambridgeshire District Council successfully bid for £5 million from Central Government to fund a new recycling service and retain weekly waste collections last year.

For more information on the waste and recycling service in East Cambridgeshire please visit https://www.eastcambs.gov.uk/waste/recycling-service-changes or call 01353 665555.