The latest from the council is on their website here:
Updated 30 December ? 10am
Crews will be collecting in the Rochford area on 31 December as usual.On Thursday 31 December non-recyclable collections from last week will be collected from Great Wakering, Paglesham & Canewdon, and on Saturday 2 January recyclables will be collected from these areas.
The recyclable collections from the rest the District will be on the normal day for collection.
SITA will be collecting any surplus recyclable waste presented as long as it is not in black plastic sacks. Any non recyclable bins presented will also be emptied.
From 4 January normal collections will be resumed with compostables and non recyclable collections on the normal day of collection.We will continue to update the website at www.rochford.gov.uk as soon as we have any further information. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to ring our Recycling Team on 01702 318 111 or call SITA on 01702 533 880 for updates.
and to their credit the council communications team are now showing 22 comments!
I believe in giving credit where it is due as well. After a wait of 3 weeks for a collection of non recycling in my part of Hawkwell, RDC duly kept to the schedule published above and not only picked this up but also met the 2 weekly collection of recyclables. Well done and thank you. But I do think that some recyclables got into black plastic sacks. Mostly because it is difficult to find clear bags in the shops to meet such a contingency.
Thanks must go to Online Focus for keeping the general public informed about Bin collections over the past few weeks. We have checked the web site regularly, & then been able to advise some of our neighbours.
This information also means that bins (hopefully) are only put out on the correct day. Thus preventing the sort of behaviour that took place last night in Downhall Road, when a friend of ours had a bin hurled at his car by youths!
The Online Focus is so much easier to access than the RDC website. But we have to ask the question,how do we get this sort of important information to the general public, when many still do not have access to the internet at home, & most are unaware they need to check for this sort of information?
I am also pleased to learn that RDC now has a supply of salt. In the last serious snowfall the pavements were a disgrace! Perhaps the areas outside shops at least will now be gritted?
Finally, may I say how pleased I am to be living under a District Council that had the foresight to bring in Wheelie bins many years ago. We do not have to put up with the unsightly mess that greets visitors to Southend, with pink bags all over the place! Our bins & recycling system beats most other authorities into a cocked hat! Thank you RDC!
A healthy & peacefull 2010 to you all.
Thanks for your kind words Janet and Happy New Year.
The internet is the best way of getting this information out, the percentage of people with internet access in Rayleigh is pretty high. And if those with internet access looked at the council site and then put out the correct bin, theere would probably be enough ‘correct’ bins going out for people who haven’t got internet to see what to do.
Why aren’t more people looking at the council website? Is it too cluttered? It’s certainly more cluttered than the Castle Point website at http://www.castlepoint.gov.uk/main.cfm
It might help if the councillor in charge of the district council website was someone who was an enthusiast for the web. However we have the opposite situation -the councillor in charge doesn’t use a computer, and doesn’t have one at home. (By the way she has a council email address, but all emails are printed off at the council offices and she is given a hard copy. If people havem’t put their name, address or phone number on them it’s hard for her to respond) .
It wasn’t fair to her to give her the responsibility for this.
And yes Janet, the wheelie bins may be one of the best things the council has ever done.
To be honest I find the RDC website not at all informative and difficult to find anything on it.
As a suggestion have a look at the Bath and North East Somerset website. It is clear, easy to navigate, informative and has links to other sites. They also send out a weekly e-mail which gives snippets of what has been happening and has links to the full story.
A happy and peaceful New Year to everyone.
John, I don’t think you need to get clear bags for recycling over-spill, you just have to ensure they are not black. This Christmas period I used a giant Argos carrier bag for the excess recycling, and in the past have used tesco carrier bags, and they have always been taken, no questions asked. This was the advice given to me by RDC when my blue bin got “recycled” with the waste that was in it.
The council only has a hang-up on black bags because they look like the old general rubbish sacks. It’s a real pain, because local supermarkets sell black sacks that are compostable, but I can’t use them because of the colour, and we obviously can’t be trusted to use the right composting bags. Sadly the large, green compost bags that I used to get from Tesco no longer seem to be available, so I now have to use “normal” bin liners in my kitchen bin for compostables, and then tip the contents loose into my green wheely bin, which leaves it in a right mess.