FOR some residents, this can’t come soon enough: the new year’s worth of blue bin bags will start to be delivered by Wokingham Borough Council from next week.
More than five million plastic bags will go to every home in the borough over a five-week period. As in previous years, households will receive 80 bags in two rolls of 40 and should be used from April through to March 2021.
The council said that the size and quality of the bags remains the same and that it can only collect waste in blue bags. No changes are planned to waste collections – they will remain weekly.
However, larger families – five or more in the household – who used to automatically receive extra bags will no longer do so. Wokingham Borough Council said that this is due to changes to its recycling scheme, which includes additional plastic containers, tetrapak and food waste.
If you are a larger family, with five or more living permanently in your household, then you must wait until June to apply for a voucher from the council for additional blue bags.
In a statement, Cllr Parry Batth, executive member for environment and leisure, said: “Our residents are finding they need fewer and fewer blue bags by making the most of our extensive recycling services at the kerbside – helping us achieve our aim to recycle more than 50 per cent of our waste in borough.”
There will also be changes to the garden waste scheme: those who currently use it will receive a letter in March detailing how to opt-in to the 2020-21 scheme.
And Cllr Batth is delighted that the food waste collections have been so popular.
“Our food waste scheme has been a runaway success and we can only thank our residents for taking to it so readily,” he said.
“It’s really heartening to see how it has also boosted recycling habits for our kerbside collections, with our residents making sure Wokingham borough continues to increase its recycling percentages annually.”
To find out when your blue bags are due to be delivered, visit wokingham.gov.uk and search ‘annual blue bag delivery’.
