New tags for unemptied bins to help households get back on track

The Council has introduced a new yellow tag for bins when householders get in a muddle with collections.

The new tags now tell people what bin they should have put out.

They also have a QR code people can easily scan with their smartphone to view collections coming up for their area, to help them keep on track.

The tags were redesigned following feedback from the Council’s waste crews who felt the old tags didn’t have enough information on them to help explain to householders why a bin hadn’t been emptied.

Waste and Recycling Officer, Mark Vincent, said: “The new tags are much more informative – in the past some householders with unemptied bins have been worried they were recycling ‘wrong’ when it was more a case they’d just got the collection weeks muddled up.

“We hope this new tag will help make it clear why we’ve not been able to accept a bin and help people get back on track with their collections, because we want to support people to recycle as much as they can and not get disheartened.”

Unfortunately when people put the wrong bins or recycling out, crews can’t empty them or it will contaminate the rest of the load.

To help householders keep up with what’s being collected when, the Council does a Friday reminder of the recycling collections for the week ahead, on its facebook page www.facebook.com/oicupdates 

Households can also look up their bin collection schedule for the weeks ahead at any time at www.orkney.gov.uk/mybins 

The yellow tags follow on from red tags introduced last month to enable people to easily reorder a new bin, to replace damaged ones.

The waste team would also like to remind everyone we no longer accept recycling material in caddies, either inside a bin or presented separately. This is to limit manual handling for our staff. Caddies can be used for storage but please don’t present caddies for collection – putting your recycling in a bin is the safest and most efficient way of making sure that it can be collected properly.