Somerset Waste Partnership (SWP) is asking residents to make a date with their revised rubbish and recycling collection days over the festive period.
Public holidays mean collections always change over Christmas and New Year. And, with the festive period usually meaning more waste to recycle and dispose of, it is important that everyone knows their days so they do not miss a collection.
The revised schedule for recycling and rubbish is below. Every Somerset resident can check their collection days, for now and the rest of the year, using the My Collection Day feature on the somersetwaste.gov.uk website.
Usual day Revised collection day
Thursday 24 December NO CHANGE
Friday 25 December Monday 28 December
Monday 28 December Tuesday 29 December
Tuesday 29 December Wednesday 30 December
Wednesday 30 December Thursday 31 December
Thursday 31 December Saturday 2 January
Friday 1 January Monday 4 January
Monday 4 January Tuesday 5 January
Tuesday 5 January Wednesday 6 January
Wednesday 6 January Thursday 7 January
Thursday 7 January Friday 8 January
Friday 8 January Saturday 9 January
Monday 11 January Usual collections resume
As usual, garden waste collections are suspended for two weeks after Christmas Eve to help crews cope with the extra waste that comes with the festive holidays.
They restart on Saturday, 9 January – picking up collections that would usually have taken place on Friday, 8 January. Usual garden waste collections resume from Monday, 11 January.
All 16 of Somerset’s recycling sites will be open their usual winter hours throughout the festive period, except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.
They are a good option for disposing of large amount of recycling, such as cardboard, and will have special drop-off points for paper gift wrap.
Only paper wrapping paper – minus glitter, tape and decorations – is recyclable and can also go in recycling boxes to be collected from the kerbside. Foil, plastic or glittery wrap cannot be recycled so needs to go in the rubbish bin.
If you have space, real Christmas trees can be composted or turned into a garden wildlife corner.
Garden Waste Service subscribers can leave their decoration-free tree next to their garden waste bin for collection – so long as it is no taller than 6ft and its trunk no wider than 4 inches. Please try and do this within two weeks of the collections restarting.
Everyone without a Garden Waste subscription will need to take their tree, decoration-free, to a recycling site and put it in a garden waste skip. They will not be collected from the kerbside.
SWP Managing Director Mickey Green said: “We encourage people to reduce and reuse but this is always a busy time of year for us, with more people at home and all the waste that Christmas tends to create.
“The good news is that almost all that waste can be recycled in the weekly kerbside collections. Just make sure you know your collection days and it will help everything go smoothly.
“If you have large loads, then a trip to one of the recycling sites may be a good idea.”
For more tips on how to reduce, reuse and recycle at this time of year visit www.somersetwaste.gov.uk/festive