Recycling campaign rolled out

The Right Stuff, Right Bin campaign

The campaign to help residents put the right waste in the correct bin is being rolled out to a further area this Friday in a bid to improve the area’s recycling rates.

Residents around Halifax Road, Birch Road and Starring Way, in Littleborough, whose bins are collected on Friday mornings’ round one, will either be left a green ‘thank you’ tag on bins with correctly sorted rubbish by council officers or those bins found to be contaminated with the wrong waste will be given a red ‘wrong stuff, wrong bin’ tag. Repeat offenders could have faced £75 fines.

The campaign is funded by the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority. The campaign message to recycle properly will be backed up by leaflets, posters, flyers, roadshows and a team visiting houses on the refuse round. The bin round was chosen because of the high number of rejected loads.

The Right Stuff, Right Bin campaign, which was trialled by 1,600 households in Newbold, Belfield and Wardleworth from 20 September to 15 November last year, raised awareness of contaminated bins and recycling rates across the borough, not only in the pilot area. Contamination was reduced by 61 per cent in the light green blue lidded mixed recycling bin and recycling rates went up by 49 per cent. Recycling rates for paper and card in blue bins went up by seven per cent.

Failure to sort rubbish properly costs Rochdale borough taxpayers around £70,000 each year, as penalties of £300 per tonne are levied for each contaminated load.