Make the most of East Devon's great recycling service

Christmas and the New Year is a time when you can make the most of East Devon's improved recycling service and recycle as much of your household waste as possible to enable us to re-use our valuable resources.

East Devon residents are keen recyclers and have had an excellent year as they now recycle 57% of their household waste.

During the festive season – and all year round - please help to collect as many valuable materials as possible by recycling your plastic bottles, tubs, pots and trays, food tins and drinks cans, foil trays and aerosols, food and drink cartons (tetrapaks) using your green recycling sack. You can then use your green recycling box to collect your cardboard, paper, glass, batteries, small electrical items and textiles. Christmas wrapping paper can be recycled as long as it's not glittery or shiny metallic.

And don't forget your blue food waste caddy which, during the festive season, really comes in to its own as you can collect vegetable and fruit peelings, cooked and uncooked food, meat and fish (including bones), plate scrapings, tea bags, coffee grounds and cat and dog food.

If you don't have compostable bags to line the caddy, use newspaper or even non-glittery Christmas wrapping paper to wrap the food waste instead. A new change this year also means you can now use a plastic carrier bag to line your caddy to make recycling your food waste even easier.

Cllr Tom Wright, East Devon District Council's portfolio holder for the environment,  said:

Households are already receiving our special bin hangers which give them the Christmas and New Year collection dates and I would urge residents to read the information carefully, use the correct containers and recycle as much as they can.

Also don't forget you can have your real Christmas tree recycled in the New Year for free and all the pulp is used for mulch and composting in East Devon's local parks.Take your Christmas tree along to one of the following recycling events:

Axminster, West Street car park, on Monday, January 7, from 12.30pm to 2.30pm

Broadclyst, Victory Hall car park, on Tuesday January 8 from 12.30pm to 2.30pm

Budleigh Salterton, Lime Kiln car park Tuesday January 8, from 8.30pm to 11.30pm

Exmouth, Imperial Road car park, on Monday, January 7, from 8.30am to 2pm

Honiton, Lace walk car park, on Tuesday January 8, from 8.30am to 11.30am

Ottery St Mary, Land off Canaan car park, on Tuesday January 8, 12.30pm to 2.30pm

Seaton, Harbour Road car park, on Monday January 7, 8.30am to 11.30am

Sidmouth, Manor Road car park, on Wednesday January 9, 8.30am to 12pm

For customers who have signed up to the green waste collection service please note that collections will be suspended for four weeks between Monday 17 December and Friday 11 January. The fortnightly collections will start again from Monday 14 January.

If you haven't yet signed up for green waste collections you can sign up at any time of the year.