‘I’m hoping that residents can get on board’ with extra wheelie bin, writes leader of Lincolnshire County Council Martin Hill

Purple-lidded bins and their importance is the topic of this month’s column by leader of Lincolnshire County Council Martin Hill. He writes:

Disposing of household waste in and around Grantham is a key county council responsibility. However, it’s South Kesteven District Council who collect your bins.

Last week, the district agreed to be the next in Lincolnshire to adopt the purple-lidded bins for paper and cardboard.

Working with our district partners, we began rolling out the new purple-lidded bins in 2021, and this will be the fifth area to adopt the new household bins, after Boston, North Kesteven, East and West Lindsey.

Thanks to a huge effort from residents in those districts, what we’ve seen is not only a huge increase in the quality of the paper and cardboard sent for recycling, but an impressive decrease in contamination – the wrong things being put in the bin – in recycling overall.

The benefit of collecting paper and cardboard separately from other recycling is that it is kept clean and dry, meaning we can send it to a specialist papermill just over the county border in King’s Lynn. There, in a matter of days, your recycling becomes new paper, ready to be printed on.

By keeping it separate and free from contamination, your paper and cardboard can be recycled many times over.

Palm Paper, operators of the King’s Lynn papermill, says that the waste they get from Lincolnshire is the highest quality material sent to them by any local authority in the country.

In the South Kesteven area, we expect to start delivering the new bins to households in autumn, ready for the first collections of paper and cardboard to take place in the district in February 2024.

I’m hoping that residents can get on board here in much the same way as they have in other areas of the county. This helps us to recycle more, reduce our impact on the environment, and save money which is invested right back into the waste service.

I know that the new purple-lidded bin will represent a big change in how we recycle at home, and we’ll all have to get into the habit of putting paper and cardboard in a separate bin. However, there will be plenty of information coming out and support available from both the county council and district council to help you get used to the change.

As we wait for our new purple-lidded bins to arrive, it’s a good time to remind ourselves to think ‘Right Thing, Right Bin’, and check what you can and can’t recycle at home.

If you’re ever in doubt about whether you can recycle something, it’s better to leave it out of the bin, and check on the waste A-Z on the council’s website.