| Residents urged to not waste the chance to have a green Christmas |
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Christmas can generate plenty of extra household waste and Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council is urging residents to throw away less and recycle more during the festive season. Reducing the amount people buy over the festive season or finding alternatives to buying new items, for example getting pre-loved gifts from websites or apps or giving the gift of time, is an excellent way to save some money, be helpful to friends and loved ones and reduce waste. Buying extra food over Christmas can lead to more food waste. The average family throws over £700 worth of food in the bin every year. There are plans to introduce food waste collections in the borough but work to reduce the amount of food that is thrown away can start now. Online portion guides can help with meal planning during festive gatherings and when there are leftovers, these can be frozen or made into something else with some of the Love Food Hate Waste recipes at www.LoveFoodHateWaste.com/foods-and-recipes To recycle more at home, residents are encouraged to buy drinks in plastic or glass bottles rather than cartons. Plastic bottles must be put in the recycling bin and glass bottles in the glass box for collection. There are lots of other items that can be recycled during the festive season and throughout the year including paper, newspapers and magazines, food tins including biscuit or sweet tins, drinks cans and aerosols. These items must be clean, dry and put inside the green recycling bin loose. Plastic bags must not be put inside the green bin as they cannot be recycled. Instead, these can be taken to some larger supermarkets for recycling or reused at home. Any extra recycling that won't fit in the recycling bin can be put in clear sacks next to the bin for collection. In dry weather, residents can also leave large, flattened cardboard boxes, of a maximum size of one metre by one metre, next to their green bin. Polystyrene and plastic packaging must be removed first. When wrapping presents, residents are encouraged to choose recyclable Christmas wrapping paper or brown paper. Wrapping paper often has glitter on it and is generally poor-quality paper and needs to go into the grey waste bin. Brown paper, with ribbon and sticky tape removed, can be recycled. More information on what can be recycled can be found at www.basingstoke.gov.uk/recycle or by calling the council on 01256 844844. Use of batteries normally goes up at Christmas and used batteries can be returned to local shops or supermarkets with battery collection points. Batteries must not be put in waste bin as they can cause serious fires in the bin trucks, endangering the waste collection crews. Garden waste customers will be able to put their real Christmas trees out for collection with their garden waste from Monday 6 January. Christmas trees over 6ft need to be cut in half and decorations must be removed. Real Christmas trees can also be recycled at one of the drop-off points across the borough between Saturday 28 December 2024 and Friday 31 January 2025. More information, including changes to drop-off points, is available at www.basingstoke.gov.uk/christmas-tree-2024 Glass recycling is popular at Christmas. Glass collection boxes or bins should be placed next to your green recycling bin by 7am on recycling collection days. All bottles and jars should be rinsed out and any corks or tops removed. Glass boxes or bins should not be overfilled as they will not be emptied, and neither will bottles or jars put out for collection in any other container. Extra free green glass boxes can be picked up from the council offices in London Road, Basingstoke between 8.30am and 4.30pm from Monday to Friday, alternatively residents can call 01256 844844 to request delivery. A red 140-litre glass bin can also be purchased for £40 as an alternative to a box by calling 01256 844844. More information, is available at www.basingstoke.gov.uk/glassrecycling Collection days will change over the Christmas break and the revised dates are shown below. Unless adverse weather affects bin rounds, collections will return to normal from Monday 13 January 2025. The crews will take extra rubbish sacks on the first collection after Christmas only. Excess recycling is collected throughout the year. Normal collection date Festive collection date Wednesday 25 December Friday 27 December Thursday 26 December Saturday 28 December Friday 27 December Monday 30 December Monday 30 December Tuesday 31 December Tuesday 31 December Thursday 2 January Wednesday 1 January Friday 3 January Thursday 2 January Saturday 4 January Friday 3 January Monday 6 January Monday 6 January Tuesday 7 January Tuesday 7 January Wednesday 8 January Wednesday 8 January Thursday 9 January Thursday 9 January Friday 10 January Friday 10 January Saturday 11 January For garden waste customers, there will be a two-week break for garden waste collections over the festive period. Collections will stop after Friday 20 December and will start again from Monday 6 January 2025. Customers should put their brown bins out on their normal collection day, revised Christmas collection dates do not apply to garden waste collections. Cabinet Member for Climate and Ecological Emergency Cllr Chris Tomblin said: "Extra rubbish will be inevitable over the festive period but we can all look at how we can reduce the amount we are throwing away and reducing our impact on the environment by buying less, reusing items and recycling more. There are already many people who do as much as they can to reduce their impact on the environment and I would like to thank them for their efforts. We can all make changes to contribute to a more sustainable start to 2025 and I encourage people to think about how they can make a real difference." There is more information on festive bin collections on the council's website at www.basingstoke.gov.uk/festive-bin-collections Residents can check what day their bins will be collected on www.basingstoke.gov.uk/bincollections |