Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council : What to do with your festive waste Fri 18 Dec 2015

Christmas is known as a time of peace and goodwill, a time to exchange gifts, to catch up with friends and family and to eat, drink and be merry.

Less joyously, it is also a time when households generate an awful lot of waste - wrapping paper, envelopes, boxes and other packaging, bottles, cans, food leftovers and - when the dust has settled on the celebrations and we start to settle into a new year - many people have a real Christmas tree to dispose of.

It is a good time, then, for people to make sure they are aware of all the options and arrangements for getting rid of their waste in the most appropriate and environmentally-friendly way possible.

Probably the most important details for people to remember over Christmas are the collection dates for their domestic waste. As ever, there are a few changes to waste collections to allow for the public holidays.

The most significant change is for those people who subscribe to the garden waste collection service. They are reminded that from tomorrow (Friday 19th December), until they resume from Tuesday 19th January 2016, there will be no garden waste collections, due to the usual, scheduled winter shut down for this service.

There are also changes to your green and grey bin collection days if you are scheduled for collections on Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

If your collection was scheduled for Christmas Day (Friday) it will now take place on Sunday 27th December. If your bin was due to be collected on New Year's Day (Friday) it will be collected on Saturday 2nd January 2016 instead. All other collection days remain the same. Make sure your bin is out by 7am on the morning of collection, as the crews are operating on a winter schedule and may collect bins earlier than they normally do.

So what should you do with all that extra paper, packaging, food and other waste generated over the festive period? Here are some details/ideas about what to do with the most common items:-

• Wrapping paper - only pure paper wrapping can be placed in your grey recycling bin. The foil or shiny type paper cannot be recycled.

• Christmas cards - these can go in the grey bin, and there are also many shops that also offer a Christmas card recycling service. Alternately, old Christmas cards can be kept and re-used for gift tags next Christmas.

• Envelopes - All envelopes can be recycled via the grey bin, so long as there is no plastic window in it. Keen recyclers may choose to tear out the plastic window.

• Boxes - Cardboard boxes, which you may want to flatten to save space, can be placed in the grey bin for recycling.

• Toy packaging - Many toys these days come packaged with a combination of cardboard and plastic. Only the cardboard can be recycled, so if you want to recycle these items, you must ensure all the plastic elements are removed.

• Bottles and cans - All glass bottles and aluminum cans can go in your grey bin. When having parties, some people find it handy to put a box in the kitchen to collect empty bottles and cans in to help with the recycling and cleaning up!

• Food waste - Invaluable help and advice on how to avoid generating too much food waste and using what leftovers you might have can be found at www.lovefoodhatewaste.com

• Christmas trees - If you subscribe to the garden waste collection service, you can recycle your real Christmas tree in your brown bin. You should cut it up into smaller pieces and place it in the brown bin (with the lid closed) until the kerbside collections resume from 19th January 2016. Alternately, used real Christmas trees can be recycled at your local Household Waste Recycling Centre. You can find a list of these here:- http://recycleformerseyside.com/in-your-area/wirral/

• Unwanted clothes and toys - Often at Christmas, it is 'out with the old, in with the new'. If you have clothes and toys that you want to get rid of because you have got new things over Christmas, then consider donating them to a local charity rather than putting them in the bin.

Excess waste, including mixed recycling you can't fit into your grey bin, can be taken to any of Wirral's Household Waste Recycling Centres.

If residents need to report a problem with their bin collections between 23rd December 2015 and 4th January 2016, they can do so online only via the Wirral Council website - http://www.wirral.gov.uk/bins-and-recycling