43,000 new wheelie bins on the way in South Staffordshire
More than 43,000 new wheelie bins will begin to be delivered across South Staffordshire from next Monday – but residents are being warned not to use them until new refuse lorries hit the roads at the start of April.
The blue bins will replace green boxes and white bags and will offer four times as much space for recycling.
The £880,000 investment goes alongside a £2 million replacement fleet of 16 bin lorries to collect the recycling.
It means residents will no longer have to separate their paper into the white bags and put the rest of their recycling in the green boxes for the fortnightly rounds.
South Staffordshire Council believes it can save around £15,000 a year because it is currently having to send out 4,500 additional or replacement green boxes every year for people who have either run out of space for their rubbish or have broken them.
The council also gets called by residents asking for replacement bags after they have blown away in the wind. And the new scheme will allow people to recycle plastic bags, corrugated cardboard and kitchen foil alongside the existing cans, plastic, card, glass and paper the bin men already collect.
The wheelie bins will be 240 litres, the same as the grey bins used for normal rubbish and the green bins for garden waste, compared with the current 55-litre green box and flimsy white bags.
South Staffordshire Council will start collecting recycling in the new bins from Easter Monday, April 1, when the new lorries go into service.
Until then bosses say residents shouldn't use the new bins because the existing fleet of lorries does not have the facility to lift the wheelie bins and tip them up.
Councillor Brian Edwards, the leader of South Staffordshire Council, said: "It's about making the service a lot easier for people to use."
