What to do with excess cardboard
We know people need to throw away extra cardboard from time to time - and they may have more than they can fit into their blue bag - for example when online shopping or at Christmas.
If you need to throw away excess cardboard, please be aware of the following:
- It is not safe for our crews to manually throw cardboard into the back of the trucks - they could get caught or injured by truck machinery, which in other authority areas has even led to fatalities.
- Because of this, if you watch our crews, you will see they empty blue bags into what we call a 'service bin' and then put the 'service bin' onto the bin lift, so the cardboard/paper can be safely lifted into our trucks.
- Unfortunately our crews do not have time to fold people's cardboard down to fit into the 'service bin' - if we did this for every (or even a few households) on each street we visit, we wouldn't finish our rounds on time and we'd miss lots of people's bins.
- This is why we ask that if you need to put out additional cardboard, that you break it down/fold it into blue bag size bundles for the crew, and leave it to the side of the bag/bin - this way our crew can easily pop it into the 'service bin' to safely dispose of it.
- If it's wet weather, please put the excess card out on the morning of your collection to prevent it from getting soggy.
- Please do not put extra cardboard in a plastic bag, as the crew can't throw the plastic bag into the bin wagon (as they can only dispose of paper and card in the bin wagon, or it contaminates the load so it will be rejected) and have nowhere to put a plastic bag.
- If you regularly have extra card, please order an additional blue bag
