Bright start for city's orange bag collections
Last week LEICESTER said a final goodbye to the old green recycling boxes and saw the start of the city's new orange bag recycling service.
The new orange bag scheme was succesfully trialled in four areas of the city: Evington, Braunstone, Belgrave and Eyres Monsell.
Figures from that trial show that the new scheme could increase the city’s recycling and composting rate from 40 per cent to 48 per cent. The simplicity of the new scheme also seemed to strike a chord as the number of people choosing to recycle in the trials increased by an average of 20 per cent.
Following the decision to roll out the scheme city-wide, over 110,000 rolls of orange bags were delivered to city homes during the first two weeks of October.
Biffa Leicester's eleven-strong fleet of new, orange-cabbed trucks then began the first full orange bag collection rounds across the city from the 17th October, also taking away any unwanted green boxes. The old boxes will be granulated and recycled into new items including new wheelie bins.
Orange bags are picked up the same day as your normal bin collection day to help keep the changeover to the new service as simple as possible. Collections will continue on a weekly basis.
The new recycling service means that people can use the bags to recycle a much wider range of household items than previously accepted in the green box.
The orange bags can be used to recycle mixed plastics including food containers, plastic film and carrier bags; tins, cans and empty aerosols; paper including junk mail, newspapers and magazines, envelopes, catalogues and directories; cardboard; glass bottles and jars; and other food and takeaway packaging including Tetra Pak, foil and Styrofoam.
People can put out as many orange bags for collection as needed.
The tied bags will be collected as presented, with no need for kerbside sorting and no green boxes left on the street. All orange bags will then be taken to Biffa's materials recover facility in Aldridge for processing.
Wheelie bin waste will continue to be processed at the Biffa 'ball mill' in Bursom.
If you have not received your orange bags please let us know: Contact Us.
