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Sorted!
Waste news
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Following the bank holiday yesterday, all recycling and rubbish collections will move by a day for the rest of the week.
If your recycling and/or rubbish is usually collected on a Monday, then it will be collected on Tuesday (today), if your usual day is Tuesday, it will be collected on a Wednesday and so on.
This includes collections that would usually take place on Friday, 8 May taking place on Saturday, 9 May.
The same will happen at the end of the month following the bank holiday on Monday, 25 May. You can check your collection day anytime online.
 If you subscribe to the garden waste collection service, you may soon receive an email renewal notice. However, there’s no need to wait for your notification before you renew.
The simplest way to renew your subscription is online, visit our garden waste collection webpage.
You can also follow the link to check when your subscription is due, or sign up as a new subscriber.
If you provide an email address, we’ll email you a renewal notice in the month before your subscription is due.
Due to the high costs of postage and administration, we no longer post renewal notification letters. We recommend making a note in your calendar or diary ahead of your garden waste subscription expiry date.
The latest recycling league tables for England were recently published by Defra. These tables share details about how much rubbish and recycling is collected by each local authority in England.
We’re pleased to share that we remain in the top 10% of all authorities for our recycling rate. Our recycling rate of 55.5% places us 32nd out of 321 authorities.
Thank you to our dedicated residents that help us stay among the top recyclers in England, but we know there is always more we can all do!
Don’t forget to check before you throw. In 2023 our survey of household rubbish bins revealed that 7%, by weight, of our rubbish bins could have been recycled at one of our recycling sites. Visit our recycling sites pages to find out what items can be recycled.
A further 7% was garden waste, there are several easy options for recycling garden waste. The best way to use garden waste is to compost it at home where nutrients can be returned to your garden). Alternatively, you can take it to any of our recycling sites for free or subscribe to our garden waste collection service.
If you’ve got an item you are not sure how to recycle, check out Recycle Now’s recycling locator, which provides details of where items can be taken.
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Got a broken toaster, a torn jumper or a wobbly chair? Before you throw it away, why not see if it can be repaired?
Community repair groups across Somerset help residents to fix everyday items. They help to save money, reduce waste and keep useful things in use for longer. Repairs are low cost, groups ask for donations to help cover the costs of putting on an events. You’ll also need to supply any parts needed for the fix, and you’ll often pick up handy tips along the way.
Repair groups are friendly, welcoming events run by volunteers who enjoy fixing things and sharing skills. You can bring along small electrical items, bikes, clothes, furniture and more – it varies by group, so it’s always worth checking first.
Taking part helps cut down on waste, supports your local community and is a great way to try something new.
We often get questions about how to recycle some common materials and household items, here’s a round-up of what to do with some of them.
- broken glass – should be wrapped up carefully in paper or in a box, put this in with your general waste.
- Tetra Pak and cartons – empty cartons should be rinsed, squashed and recycled via your green box.
- glass jar lids – lids can be left on jars to stop them getting lost in the recycling process.
- blister packs – for example pill packets, can’t be recycled from home. They’re made from mixed materials and need specialist recycling.
- Pringles tubes - new pringles tubes, with a cardboard base, can be recycled via the black box with cardboard. The plastic top in the blue bag, the seal is the only bit that needs to go in the bin.
- spray bottle triggers – we can’t accept these, please bin the trigger top and add the plastic bottle to your bright blue bag for recycling.
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We want to make sure that everyone (our crews and residents) stay safe. Following the simple guidelines can help to prevent fires that risk the lives of staff as well as disrupting collections.
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Earth Day was celebrated last month on 22 April and was a good reminder that we don’t have to think big when it comes to making changes for the planet.
One of the easiest ways to help is by wasting less food, and we don’t have to wait for Earth Day to change our habits.
When food is thrown away, it’s not just the food itself that’s wasted. All the energy, fuel and resources used to grow, produce, package and transport it are thrown away too. This adds to climate change and puts unnecessary pressure on the environment.
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Blog post courtesy of CAG Somerset
With the UK consuming 1.4 million tonnes of new textile products in 2022 alone, we need to start to rethink our relationship with textiles. CAG Somerset has a network of 51 grassroots members taking action on reuse, repair, waste reduction, sharing, surplus food, composting, tackling climate change or encouraging sustainable behaviours within communities. 22 of those members are working on repair and reuse across Somerset.
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Blog post courtesy of CAG Somerset
In April, volunteers from Minehead, Porlock and West Quantocks Repair Cafés came together in Williton for a relaxed and practical coastal roundtable, supported by CAG Somerset. It was a chance to share experiences, celebrate successes, and explore how working more closely together could help these much-loved community projects reach even more people.
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