Burnley Council issues updated advice on household waste collections

Recycling and non-recycling collections are carrying on as normal, and people should still look to put their rubbish out for 6-30am on the usual collection day.

The council has issued the following advice to households:

Self-isolating

This advice is specifically for households who are currently self-isolating or households where one or more persons have mild symptoms as identified by the recent national guidance.

If you and your family are self-isolating as you have symptoms of coronavirus, take these simple steps:

· Store personal waste such as tissues and disposable cleaning cloths securely within bin bags. Securely tie the bags.

· Place this bag inside another bin bag and securely tie the bag (double bag)

· Keep them away from where you are self-isolating

· Don’t put them in the claret bin for at least 72 hours in order to allow any virus which may be in the waste to die. This will avoid the virus spreading.

Keeping your bin clean

While everyone is taking extra steps to keep homes and workplaces clean, the council is urging please not to forget their wheelie bins.

Collection crews can touch up to 2,000 bins each per day. They will be wearing gloves, but it is advised that you disinfect the bin handles once you take the bin out and when you bring it back in. Please remember to wash your hands after taking these actions.

Bulky collections

Bulky waste collections are currently still operating, but this may change as the council continues to manage the services in the best way it can during this period of uncertainty with the resources which they have available.

Extra waste

The council understands it may be tempting to have a good spring clean while spending more time at home. However, please think about how you’ll store the extra waste that this will create given that the household waste recycling centres are temporarily closed.

Our crews are working flat out and will not be able to collect extra bags and boxes. Leaving waste at the side of the bins presents an extra risk to staff.

In addition, if extra waste is placed out for collection then there will not be enough room in our collection vehicles and this means other residents may have to miss having their bins being emptied.

If you do want to have a good tidy up, think about how you can store the rubbish and split it over your next few collections to make sure it fits in your bins but doesn’t make them too heavy.

Food

There has been lots in the news about panic buying which means the council is expecting a big increase in the amount of food residents are throwing away.

The Love Food Hate Waste website – www.lovefoodhatewaste.com – has lots of tips to help keep food fresh for as long as possible. This will be extremely useful during the period.

They also have recipes for individual ingredients to help cut down on the amount you need to throw away and the amount of shopping trips you need to be making – which is more important than ever.