Exmouth now recycling 60% of their waste every week

News Desk
Authored by News Desk
Posted Friday, April 14, 2017 - 9:08am

Exmouth householders are now recycling almost 60% of their waste every week thanks to a new improved recycling service introduced by East Devon District Council in February.

Provisional findings show that recycling in the town has risen from 44% before the service was launched, to 59% in the first six weeks of the new scheme. Significantly, the amount of rubbish people are throwing away has dropped during the same period from 56% to 41%.

The council’s contractors SUEZ is now collecting, on average, around 90 tonnes of recycling from the town every week – an increase of more than 24 tonnes and the equivalent weight of six hippos!

East Devon District Council has extended the number of items that Exmouth residents can collect for recycling to include cardboard, cartons/Tetra Paks and small electrical items. Plastics such as yoghurt pots, plastic meat and vegetable trays, plastic bottles and margarine/ice cream tubs can also be collected although residents are reminded that plastic film, wrappers, polystyrene, pill casings and rigid plastics such as children’s toys and plant pots cannot be recycled.

The extra recycling, along with usual recycling items such as cans, foil, aerosols, paper, magazines, glass bottles and jars, textiles and household batteries, is collected from the kerbside every week. Food waste caddies are collected weekly too.

As bulky items, such as meat and vegetable plastic trays and cardboard are now recycled, it means residents don’t need to throw away so much rubbish and grey wheeled waste bins are collected every three weeks.
Almost 17,000 households in Exmouth are taking part in the first phase of the new service which is being rolled out to the rest of East Devon later this year from June 12.

The latest findings were welcomed today by Cllr Paul Diviani, Leader of the council. He said: “The residents of Exmouth have really embraced the new service in such a short time and we are very grateful to them. We have worked hard prior to the introduction of the service to ensure that households had all the information they needed to make the new scheme work and this has certainly paid off when you look at the results.

“We are now turning our attention to rolling out the service to the rest of East Devon and we will be contacting households by post over the coming weeks to keep them informed of the changes.

“We have changed the service for the better because our residents have been asking us to help them recycle more and waste less for some time now. Environmentally, the service fits the bill too as one of our key council priorities is to protect the beautiful area where we live.”

Further information about the new service is available on the council’s website – www.eastdevon.gov.uk/onboard and includes a full list of what Exmouth residents can recycle.

You can also follow the council’s social media service on Facebook at East Devon District Council and @eastdevon on twitter. If you want to be kept fully up-to-date about your new collections, download the council’s really useful smart phone app which will send you reminders about your collection days tailored to your own address. The East Devon mobile app is free and is available to download from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.

If you need assistance or advice with the new service, please contact us on 01395 571515.

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