Recycling campaign rolled out to Littleborough

Right Stuff Right Bin campaign has led to a 49 per cent increase in recycling rates

A campaign to help residents put the right waste in the correct bin is being rolledin Littleborough from March in a bid to improve the area’s recycling rates.

Residents around Starring Way, Birch Road and Halifax Road, whose bins are collected on Friday mornings, 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 will run from March 24 until 30 May and 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 between April and December last year.

Councilor Jacqui Beswick said: “We really need to drive home the message about improving our recycling rates. By not sorting rubbish properly and sending contaminated loads to landfill, the authority is fined and this ultimately has to be paid for out of taxpayers’ money.”

The Right Stuff, Right Bin campaign, which was trialled 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.