Kerbside cardboard recycling returning to Shrewsbury after five years
After five years without kerbside cardboard recycling collections they will return in Shrewsbury next week.
The service in Shrewsbury, which will be provided by Shropshire Council and its waste contractor Veolia, was suspended in 2011 leaving 130,000 homes having to take cardboard to recycling centres instead.
Residents across the town have been receiving blue bags in which to place cardboard over the past few days ready for the collections to begin next week.
Councillor Hannah Fraser, who represents Shrewsbury's Abbey ward, said the reinstatement of kerbside collections is long overdue, with the people of the town frustrated at not being able to recycle.
She said: "There is a perception that people are not that bothered about recycling but on the doorsteps people have been saying that they have found it really frustrating.
"Especially because they have to make a trip to Battlefield to do their recycling and if you work during the day then you can only do that on a weekend.
"I have had my bag come through today and it is really welcome but it has taken too long to get to this point. It has been really irritating for a long time."
Councillor Fraser said that the lack of collections had hit the recycling rates in the county.
She said: "I am pretty sure that there are definitely people who would have been recycling more if we had the kerbside collections. Hopefully the recycling rates in the county will increase as a result of this."
The service begins in Shrewsbury on Monday and will follow at a later date in the rest of the county. North Shropshire's collections will start in November, South Shropshire in December, with Oswestry following in January 2017, and finally Bridgnorth in February 2017.
Kerbside collections in Shropshire stopped because of changes to national composting rules that meant cardboard could not be mixed with garden waste, in a move which was designed to improve the quality of compost made for the gardening market.
The regulations meant Veolia was not able to collect green bins that contained cardboard.
Speaking when the new service was announced earlier this year, Councillor Mal Price, Shropshire Council's cabinet member for waste, said: "This is great news for all of us. For a long time people have told us that they want to recycle cardboard at the kerbside, and for a long time we've been working hard to make this happen."
"Removal of cardboard from garden waste collections was forced on Shropshire Council and Veolia by a change to national composting standards in November 2011.
"This meant that composters would no longer accept cardboard collected in the garden waste bin.
"Since these changes, Shropshire Council and Veolia have been exploring ways to collect cardboard for recycling from the kerbside in the future, and I'm really pleased that we'll now be able to do so as part of this new service."