Recycling collections update - February 1
Following media reports today about uncollected reycling waste, the council would like to clarify the current position following recent poor weather:
The adverse weather from Friday 18 January to Friday 25 January resulted in refuse collection staff being unable to access and collect from a significant number of properties across Birmingham due to the treacherous roads and unsafe pavement conditions.
Despite the best efforts to maintain the service this interruption resulted in over 200,000 black sacks being uncollected and some 350,000 uncollected recycling containers during the period in question.
Following improvement in the weather and the road and pavement conditions, staff have worked hard to minimise the impact of this while still maintaining the delivery of 200,000 collections every day as part of the city’s “business as usual” activities.
Additional resources including evening and weekend overtime, additional agency staff, use of street cleansing staff and additional hired vehicles have all been used to support the catch-up.
The position today is varied across the city and the four operational depots are dealing with the backlog in various ways dependant on primarily the demographic, geographical and operational variances of the depots and the wards they service.
As of this morning (February 1), the overall picture is that we aim to be clear of any black sack backlog by Saturday. Recyling scheduled for this week is essentially on schedule again despite being a heavy week in terms of tonnages collected.
Last week’s recycling is still being caught up with, but planned additional weekend collections should get things back on schedule next week.
Those residents worst affected have, in the main, only missed one collection of recyclates as we have focused on collecting black sacks as a priority.
To report missed collections or any other issues, residents should log on to: http://birmingham.gov.uk/recycling
ENDS
