A couple from Ely are first winners of the East Cambridgeshire Recycling Award Scheme.

Mr & Mrs Dean from Downham Road, Ely were pulled out of the hat after their household entered the competition by simply putting their recycling bin out for collection.

Each day, monitoring staff follow a recycling collection crew. All residents putting their recycling bin out for collection are entered into a prize draw at the end of the month.

Bin hangers are attached to bins where a property has been entered into the draw. All properties are visited at least once every 10 weeks, but additional properties are chosen from other areas as an incentive to put bins out for every collection.

All prizes are in High Street Shopping Vouchers, accepted at over 20,000 UK stores, and breakdown as follows: The 1st prize - £250, 2nd prize - £100 (3 prizes) and 3rd prize - £10 (50 prizes).  

This campaign is entirely funded by a Central Government grant, which aims to increase recycling by offering incentives to residents.

Cllr Julia Huffer, Waste and Recycling Champion at East Cambridgeshire District Council, said: “Two years ago, the Council won a £5 million grant to pay for introduction of wheeled bin recycling services in East Cambridgeshire, The Council has now won a second grant that has been used to introduce a monthly prize draw that you enter just by putting your recycling bin out for collection. The District’s recycling performance has improved from 34% to 56% since new recycling services were introduced and our aim through this scheme is to do even better.

“We have three main aims: to encourage people who don’t recycle to start, to encourage people who already recycle to recycle more, and to reduce contamination of material collected by reminding people which materials we want. It was lovely to meet our winners and hear how they try to recycle as much of their waste as possible. I can’t wait to meet the winners of next month’s draw as we strive to encourage more people to recycle.”


The wheeled bin recycling service involves:

• A blue lidded wheeled bin recycling collection, including paper, glass, food & drinks cans, plastic bottles & hard plastic food containers, cartons and cardboard. This is collected fortnightly.
• A green lidded wheeled bin collection for garden and food waste. This is also collected fortnightly.
• Refuse in black sacks continues to be collected weekly

For more information on the waste and recycling service in East Cambridgeshire please call 01353 665555.