From Monday 2 September, the roll out of the new wheeled bin recycling service will begin in East Cambridgeshire over a ten week period.

Over the last few months, councillors and officers at the District Council have been busy purchasing wheeled bins and collection vehicles, developing a waste policy and surveying homes to see which properties are suitable for the new service.

This work is progressing well and this summer an awareness programme will be rolled out to ensure residents across East Cambridgeshire understand how the new service will work.

Councillor Kevin Ellis, Chairman of the Waste & Environment sub-committee at East Cambridgeshire District Council, said: "Our new wheeled bin recycling service will make a real difference to people’s lives. The new service will make collecting recycling throughout East Cambridgeshire easier, more efficient and simpler for residents with two bins to put their recycling, and food & garden waste into, removing the need to separate recyclables for collection as is currently the case. Feedback suggests that the overwhelming majority of the public support the introduction of wheeled bins so it is great to know we can now deliver a recycling service which people want across the whole District before Christmas.

"We want the switch to the new wheeled bin service to be as smooth as possible however we understand that there will be some people will have problems or questions. We are here to support, advise and guide anyone who has a problem. Once the new service is introduced recycling rates in East Cambridgeshire are expected to improve significantly and our aim is to recycle 50 per cent of the district’s waste by 2015. We can only do this by working together with residents and our collection teams to deliver the best service possible for East Cambridgeshire."

Changes mean that the current brown sack and black box collection system will be replaced with:

• A new 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 new wheeled bin collection for organics to include food and garden waste. This will also be collected fortnightly.

The service will operate on an alternate week basis where residents will be asked to put one wheeled bin out for collection one week followed by their other bin the following week. This is addition to the weekly black sack waste collections.

Properties judged unable to accept wheeled bin services because of space or access issues will be offered an alternative service based on clear sacks for recycling and continuation of the existing brown sack service for food and garden waste.

There will also be a fleet of new vehicles for the new services as well as a rescheduling of rounds to reduce carbon emissions.

These changes are possible after East Cambridgeshire District Council successfully won £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 www.eastcambs.gov.uk or call 01353 665555.