Exmouth residents reminded to check waste collections

Exmouth households who are receiving a new recycling and waste collection service from February 16, are being reminded to read the information they have been sent as they may have an extra one-off waste collection on Saturday February 11.

Residents will have been alerted to the extra waste collection by a letter they received from East Devon District Council in late January. The council is asking residents to read the information carefully as it will tell them if their household will receive this additional waste collection. This extra collection does not apply to all Exmouth households and involves the collection of grey wheeled waste bins only and not recycling. Those households with this extra collection are reminded to place their bins in their usual place by 7am.

Careful planning has gone in to delivering the new service which will mean that residents will soon be able to recycle the vast majority of their household waste – something that residents have been asking the council to help them with for many years. However, the new service has led to major changes to the routes that the recycling and waste crews usually take and would have meant that some households would have had a longer gap between collections as the service starts. This extra collection ensures that the period of time between grey wheeled waste bin collections is no more than three weeks.

With 16,700 homes in Exmouth to collect recycling and waste from, the council and its contractors SUEZ are advising that there could be some limited disruption at the start of the new service as collections settle down.

Cllr Iain Chubb, the council’s portfolio holder for the Environment, said: “With a transition on this scale involving thousands of households, including 119 blocks of flats, and more than 450 streets we do anticipate some teething problems at the start but we’re well prepared to respond quickly to these issues. We have meticulously planned the new service and we’re ready to go.

“We hope that households eligible for the one-off extra waste collection on February 11 will take it up and put out their grey wheeled bins as it will help them manage their waste in the following weeks. We felt it was inconvenient for our residents to have to wait any longer than three weeks to have their waste collected which is why we introduced it. We hope that residents appreciate that we are ensuring that they have the best possible start when our new service begins.”

Information on the new service is available on the council’s website – www.eastdevon.gov.uk/onboard and includes a full list of what residents can recycle. If you want to be kept fully up-to-date about your new collections, download the council’s really useful smart phone app which will send you reminders about your collection days tailored to your own address. The East Devon mobile app is free and is available to download from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.

Photo caption: Cllr Iain Chubb, East Devon District Council's portfolio holder for the Environment.