Council urge families to recycle Christmas waste, but beware the black box rummagers

Families are being urged to recycle their Christmas waste instead of binning rubbish for landfill sites.

Bristol City Council are keen to increase the current 40 per cent of household waste being recycled up to 50 per cent next year.

Targeting the mountain of Christmas rubbish will help them set about achieving this goal.

Councillor Gary Hopkins, the Cabinet Member for Environment and Community Safety, is highlighting the Council’s ‘comprehensive range of recycling services’.

He said: “We want everyone to enjoy the festive season, but our aim is to make sure we’re not giving extra waste to landfill at Christmas.”

It is anticipated in the run up to Christmas that UK residents will spend a whopping £7.3 billion on electrical goods including games consoles and mobile phones.

Instead of scrapping old equipment into the bin, small electrical items can be safely recycled.

Careful budgeting and storage can go some way to cutting down on the £420 worth of food that goes into the bin every year.

Food waste can be collected through the brown box scheme and the Love Food Hate Waste campaign provides easy recipes for left over food.

Christmas trees will be gratefully received by Bristol Zoo between 4-22 January and the Council’s own kerbside collection will also take them away throughout January.

The Council’s kerbside recycling collections do not always run efficiently.

We contacted the recycling customer service department, to find out why our residential black box recycling was not collected for two weeks running.

We also asked them to comment on the fact that collectors were seen on several occasions rifling through recycling and keeping items for their own personal use.

Customer Services Officer, Jack Dudman replied with the comprehensive email: ‘I was sorry to hear you have experienced problems with the collection service.

‘Bristol City Council require the box to be outside your property on the pavement for 7am on the morning of collection day. If this was the case please accept my apologies it was not collected. If you experience this problem in future please do not hesitate to contact us.’