Collection Service – The TwinBin Scheme
Your refuse collection scheme involves the use of two wheeled bins. One is a blue bin for the collection of recyclable materials, and the other a black bin for non recyclable waste.The service is operated by our contractor Cleanaway Limited. Every household receives a weekly refuse collection service. One week the recyclables in the blue bin are collected, the next week the black bin is emptied.
Blue Bin
In addition to using a local recycling site, your Blue Bin gives you the opportunity to recycle more recyclables at home. Items for recycling in your Blue Bin include:
- Paper (not shredded)
- Cardboard
- Metal food and drinks cans
- Plastic bottles (Drink, detergent, shampoo etc)
- Plastic food containers (yoghurt pots, ice cream tubs etc)
These items should all be placed in your bin relatively clean and loose (not in plastic bags), as they are sorted partly by hand, by the Councils contractor. Please select the link below for a leaflet explaining what can and cannot go into your Blue Bin:
Please remember not to put ‘mixed material items’ such as waxed cartons (Tetra-Paks) or coat hangers in your blue bin as these are currently uneconomic to recycle at the facility in Suffolk.
Textiles and Glass cannot be placed in your Blue Bin, but can be placed in banks found at a number of recycling sites and household waste sites throughout the district.
Specific advice on plastic bags:
Any type of plastic bag or film should not go in your blue bin or pink sack; this includes bread bags, crisp packets, cling film, cellophane wrap, carrier bags or black sacks. Plastic bags/film are not welcome at the Council's recycling sorting facility at Gt. Blackenham principally because many plastic bags are now made of a degradable material that can not be recycled (and it is not cost effective to slow the plant down to examine what is or is not degradable).
Our advice in relation to plastic bags, is therefore to do the following (in order of priority):
1. Avoid / Reduce
2. Reuse
3. Recycle
4. Dispose
Therefore:
1. Avoid (or reduce) using plastic bags and instead use an ordinary shopping bag or more rugged plastic 'bag for life' that many retailers offer.
2. If you must use carrier bags, then reuse them in future for shopping or to wrap putrescible food waste in your black bin, or take them to a local charity shop who may accept the non degradable variety.
3. Some supermarkets take back plastic bags for recycling, although this is usually only possible for non-degradable plastic bags.
4. As a last resort put them in your black bin.
Red and Yellow Sticker Scheme
Babergh DC currently pays a penalty of £16,000 per year to the operator of Suffolk’s recycling processing facility in Gt. Blakenham, because a minority of users of the Blue Bin scheme put the wrong items in their bin. These include food and pet waste, nappies, clinical waste and black sacks.
To minimise the unnecessary cost of disposing of these non-recyclable items Babergh is introducing a football style referee card system. Details of this can be viewed below:
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