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Recycling centre experiences during Covid19 pandemic

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johnnychips

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How is your tip? I probably should say recycling centre, but you know what I mean.

I’ve produced a lot of waste recently, because of moving from a house to a flat, and doing up another house. This involves the authorities of Sheffield and Doncaster MBCs, neither of which closed during the lockdown. They have introduced social distancing by not letting more than two to four cars in at a time, depending on how big the facility is, and in Donny they have restricted the items you can dump to garden waste, building rubble, wood, general waste and scrap metal - so no fridges or toasters. In Sheffield they ask your postcode and take the registration number and say you can’t visit more than once a day; in Donny they don’t.

I find if you choose late afternoon midweek, the queues are short, but you still might have to wait about fifteen minutes; and in Donny they are open till seven.

I opened this thread because firstly I saw news reports from Birmingham, where they did close during the lockdown, of horrendous queues on reopening; and secondly because someone on another thread said their authority had introduced a booking system, and I didn’t want to send the thread off-topic.

Credit to Doncaster MBC for keeping it going, as well as their ‘pay £35 and we will pick up 7 large items’ scheme like beds and settees etc. during the lockdown. I am sure this has reduced the incidence of flytipping.
 
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Silver Cobra

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I can't comment on how busy the tips are here in Central Bedfordshire, but the county council have gone with a 'pre-book' system, offering half-hour slots to book online via the council's website, undoubtedly with very limited availability in each half-hour slot to help maintain social distancing. You need the booking reference when you travel to the tip (either the e-mail confirmation on your phone or a print-out of the booking), otherwise you aren't allowed in. Dates for booking seem to open around a week in advance.

I imagine this wasn't actually Central Beds council's original plan for how they would manage the tips. Around two weeks ago, a large number of temporary signs appeared along roads near to the village of Broom directing drivers on where to queue up for accessing the tip at Biggleswade. It seems the idea was that they would hold all the traffic for the tip on a side road between Broom and Biggleswade to avoid blocking up the main roads into Biggleswade town and the A1 roundabout, and gradually send drivers up to the tip when space became available. However, within a day of the signs going up, they were all laid flat down, and have not been put back up since. As of the tip opening back on Monday, no traffic has been gathering along what would have been the designated road for holding it, at least from what I've seen when travelling past this road around midday on Monday and Tuesday.
 

johntea

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Credit to Doncaster MBC for keeping it going, as well as their ‘pay £35 and we will pick up 7 large items’ scheme like beds and settees etc. during the lockdown. I am sure this has reduced the incidence of flytipping.

We paid our local council to pick some large items up a couple of years ago moving house, only their services weren't required in the end as we left the items outside the house ready for collection and found someone had helped themselves to the items a few days later! :D
 

bussnapperwm

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I probably should say recycling centre, but you know what I mean.

I’ve produced a lot of waste recently, because of moving from a house to a flat, and doing up another house. This involves the authorities of Sheffield and Doncaster MBCs, neither of which closed during the lockdown. They have introduced social distancing by not letting more than two to four cars in at a time, depending on how big the facility is, and in Donny they have restricted the items you can dump to garden waste, building rubble, wood, general waste and scrap metal - so no fridges or toasters. In Sheffield they ask your postcode and take the registration number and say you can’t visit more than once a day; in Donny they don’t.

I find if you choose late afternoon midweek, the queues are short, but you still might have to wait about fifteen minutes; and in Donny they are open till seven.

I opened this thread because firstly I saw news reports from Birmingham, where they did close during the lockdown, of horrendous queues on reopening; and secondly because someone on another thread said their authority had introduced a booking system, and I didn’t want to send the thread off-topic.

Credit to Doncaster MBC for keeping it going, as well as their ‘pay £35 and we will pick up 7 large items’ scheme like beds and settees etc. during the lockdown. I am sure this has reduced the incidence of flytipping.

The authority with the pre booking only system is Dudley MBC. I only know as my colleagues in the contact centre was told a week prior to it being introduced and had to be trained on the new proceedure (I work in a department who deals often with the contact centre, and a friend from school is based in it.)
 

johnnychips

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I bet some older readers like me can remember the ‘rag and bone’ man who used to pick up any recyclable rubbish. We still have a scrap iron man in Donny.
 

ChiefPlanner

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Local rubbish and recycling / food waste collections have been exemplerary , and much appreciated.

No tips open - though I gather the Harpenden one was (but probably best avoided) , certain neighbours have building work going on , and have kindly allowed use of their skips for non recycling material.
 

Horizon22

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Key workers only at the moment - luckily I am one but I don't have any sort of bulky waste but good to know if I did, I could go.

Apparently the wait for non-key workers is over a month.
 

cactustwirly

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Mine has just reopened this week, after the council's in my area squabbled on whether to reopen or not.
My council doesn't operate it's own tip, but shares the responsibility with two others, who didn't want to reopen, when mine did!

To go to the recycling centre, you now need to book online for a timeslot.
 

ChiefPlanner

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The view locally was to prioritise labour on doorstep collections, a laudable concept which as I said , they have done very well. Interestingly some inevitable flytipping (as there always is) , which seems to have been dealt with very well.
 

nlogax

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Here in Kingston we're a part of South London Waste Partnership which seems to be working well. Rubbish collections have been normal and on time, my building has -gained- a recycling bin and I can make online appointments to visit the recycling center that reopened last week. Pretty good all round.
 

MotCO

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We also need to make on-line appointments in Bromley - the lead time was over one month. Given the horrendous queues pre-Covid, will appointments be the new norm once everything is back to normal?
 

Mcr Warrior

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Other than the Wigan area, 17 of 20 other recycling centres in the Greater Manchester area are now open, except for Bury (Every Street), Stockport (Rose Hill) and Tameside (Ash Road) which remain closed for the time being.

Opening hours are typically 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with some sites open Monday to Friday, some Saturday and Sunday only, and ten now open every day of the week.

The various centres will only take general waste, garden waste, cardboard and wood and timber.

A number plate traffic management system is reportedly in place.

More info at www.recycleforgreatermanchester.com
 

adc82140

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Here in Hampshire it's turn up, hope for the best and wait. Only 3 cars in at a time, and no chargeable waste (soil, rubble, plasterboard etc). I waited 1 and a half hours this week.
 

Mojo

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I was amused by a comment on the weekend on Monday on a local community page. Someone posted saying that they hadn’t gone to the Civic amenity site over the weekend because they thought it would be busy, but then warned that the queue was halfhour long at the time of posting (Monday morning). This was followed by a few comments from people who said they went on Saturday and there was no wait at all, with one person saying there were only three other vehicles there!

I think we could be lucky perhaps as our council is very reasonable; we have all our waste collected weekly and it is in black bags so any reasonable amount will be taken; we also have a separate mixed recycling collection, textiles, and food waste. The garden waste collection is also weekly and free of charge, with up to six hessian sacks provided upon request. We can also have up to five bulky items (including fridges) collected free of charge per year from the kerbside if prebooked. Inside the Civic amenity site you can also drop off reasonable amounts of personal building waste such as rubble which is something many councils charge for.

I haven’t been since they closed and reopened, but when I did go I never had to wait and it was never particularly busy, which is funny as I think during my childhood I remember waiting in several long queues for attending such sites with my parents at the time!
 

Tom B

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My local tip at the moment is a dual-use facility - they deal with both the public coming in to drop stuff off, as well as the council dustcarts. It is usually very quiet, especially when I go (normally around 7.30pm just before they close).

It is common in my area to leave things which have further use on the front wall. Inevitably, they get picked up by somebody who has a need for them.

For larger items, there is a specific point on the local estate at which items can be left and the council will uplift them on their rounds. Again, people will often take items which are good for re-use before the council get there (over the years, I've had a couple of fold-up chairs, a trolley, a dining table, a good quantity of timber, and a coffee table from there).

There is also a new system for large waste dumped on the street, in which the morning street-sweeper will use his phone to take a picture and this, together with the location, is sent off. Later in the day the team with a tipper come along to remove it. This is a fairly new system - Islington recently went back to employing their own dustmen and street-sweepers, rather than wasting money on private firms to do it - we are getting a noticeably better service since it changed back and the staff - who all have their own dedicated round - are happier and turnover is down.
 

mmh

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Our council (Conwy - infamous as the first in Britain with four-weekly landfill collections) kept household collections as normal, and to be fair they've been excellent as it, frequency aside, usually is.

They were however very quick off the mark to close the tips and sealed up litter bins almost immediately. Tips are reopening on the Tuesday after the bank holiday, but you need to book an "appointment" which you can do from today - and this thread's reminded me I should see how you do that and get one.
 

Bald Rick

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From my regular bike rides in the area, it seems the good folk of Luton regard the country lanes just over the border in Hertfordshire as their ‘always open’ tip.
 

AM9

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From my regular bike rides in the area, it seems the good folk of Luton regard the country lanes just over the border in Hertfordshire as their ‘always open’ tip.
They switched to that because they couldn't give us their aircraft fumes and noise pollution over recent weeks. It's nice to have been thought of so kindly. :)
 

AM9

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The view locally was to prioritise labour on doorstep collections, a laudable concept which as I said , they have done very well. Interestingly some inevitable flytipping (as there always is) , which seems to have been dealt with very well.
The Garston tip was open last week so maybe SADC are rotating the available staff.
 

Crossover

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Our local tip (in Kirklees - SUEZ run) closed at the first sniff of the lockdown (it does, in fairness, handle the dustbin lorries too) but have now reopened in the last week or so. I’m not sure of what restrictions there are (they aren’t all that great with what they take at the best of times really) but I did hear of some lengthy queues on the first days after opening. The fortnightly collections (alternating grey/green) have continued as usual though and I think some of the other paid-for collections continued as well (garden waste being one we’ve continued to use)
 

Busaholic

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In unitary authority Cornwall, where our local tip used to open 8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. summer and 8.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. winter, it's now 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. all year round now it's contracted out to Suez, with their operatives more concerned about trying to find reasons to charge for 'extras' of some sort than to aid safe and efficient tipping. The former (mostly) helpful and friendly staff have been replaced by a predominantly surly and unhelpful lot who seem to have been personally recruited by the unsmiling and rude hulk of a man who quite clearly sees it as his fiefdom. Even though it's now reopened, it's every other day according to car reg (not a bad idea) but supposedly only for 'essential' (that word again!) waste that would present a fire hazard if stored at home: unbelievable!
 

Ostrich

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Here in Dorset, the tips closed at the start of lockdown and reopened about a week ago, the main restrictions appearing to be that only 50% of the car bays were available, no more than two types of waste were to be disposed of at any one visit, and don't expect any assistance from the council employees with regard to lifting items - you must be able to do it yourself. All pretty reasonable. But the queue to my local tip (Shaftesbury) which is usually horrendous at the best of times, was initially reported as about double what it normally is, even backing up onto the main road outside the trading estate on one occasion. I do have various items to take there, electrical stuff mainly, but haven't bothered attempting it yet.

Slightly more controversially, Dorset Council announced they were suspending the kerbside garden waste bin collection for an indefinite period, about 3 days before all the annual direct debits (it's just over £50 a year) were charged to subscribers' bank accounts on 1st April o_O! That was not exactly a popular move, and some folk are said to have quickly cancelled their DDs. Two fortnightly collections were missed, then they reinstated the collections - but what happened about those who had cancelled their DDs, I've no idea ….. I'm told those of us who had already prepaid by card back in January will get a few quid knocked off next years' bill.
 

Bald Rick

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The Garston tip was open last week so maybe SADC are rotating the available staff.

Garston and Harpenden are open, but St Albans is firmly closed. The Herts CC website has details of queue lengths, which help you to decide not to go!
 

Cowley

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Due to the amount of work I was doing on our place at the height of the lockdown I ended up going half’s with the neighbour and hiring a skip. It was £135 each but it saved an entire day of going backwards and forwards to the recycling centre. I now have a rubbish free house and garden. :)
 

Mcr Warrior

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I ended up going half’s with the neighbour and hiring a skip.

I now have a rubbish free house and garden.

Hope the contents aren't now adorning the highways and byways of (for example) Hertfordshire! :)
 

Cowley

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Hope the contents aren't now adorning the highways and byways of (for example) Hertfordshire! :)
That wouldn’t be good would it? Driving along and seeing my old sofa in a lay-by...
No they’re a good reputable local firm that we’ve used before.
Actually I think there’s a bit of a cartel going on because all three local firms were charging exactly the same price. :lol:
 

Mcr Warrior

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Re-assuring to hear but there must be quite a few "man with tipper van" waste clearance (i.e. fly tipping) cowboy outfits out there just now!
 

Tom B

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The local facebook pages are a veritable source of eye rolling. The one in Doncaster includes many comments along the lines of "People shouldn't fly-tip, but..." followed by many different excuses about how it's Someone Else's Problem.

There was a lady who was caught out having her rubbish flytipped recently. She argued that she was not to know that paying £25 cash to a bloke off facebook, who did not show any credentials nor give her a Waste Transfer Note, was an indication that her stuff might be going in a layby somewhere. I bet she complains about council tax being too high too...
 

Bob figgis

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Good job your are dealing with Sheffield and Doncaster. I live within the Rotherham area whose tips have been closed during lock down. Our Recycling Centres reopened this week with a very long list of restrictions. Why Rotherham even bothered to reopen is beyond me, as the items that they will take at a recycling centre is the same stuff I put into my house hold refuse bin. And these have been consistently emptied on a 3 week cycle. So for my Recycling Centre to be open is no use to me. List of restricted items below
  • We will not accept the following items: DIY waste (including wood or rubble), plaster board, hard plastic and plastic bottles, textiles, motor oil, vegetable oil, batteries and gas canisters, and domestic appliances including fridges.
  • Residents are asked not to bring garden waste and instead use the brown bin garden waste collection service.
 
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Crossover

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In unitary authority Cornwall, where our local tip used to open 8 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. summer and 8.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. winter, it's now 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. all year round now it's contracted out to Suez, with their operatives more concerned about trying to find reasons to charge for 'extras' of some sort than to aid safe and efficient tipping. The former (mostly) helpful and friendly staff have been replaced by a predominantly surly and unhelpful lot who seem to have been personally recruited by the unsmiling and rude hulk of a man who quite clearly sees it as his fiefdom. Even though it's now reopened, it's every other day according to car reg (not a bad idea) but supposedly only for 'essential' (that word again!) waste that would present a fire hazard if stored at home: unbelievable!

Ah yes - ours was open for good hours with longer in summer, but now a shorter opening which is same all year round. Also they seem to try and find ways to deny tipping (one which surfaced a 3 or so years back was that cars had to be registered to use the tip, with a max of 2 cars per household. After it went live it was policed on-site, seemingly by a worker with an iPad and they were reprimanding those who hadn't registered. I am pretty sure it hasn't gone ANPR, but I stopped seeing the person with iPad sat out at the first sight of drizzle...)
 
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