None of borough’s rubbish is being recycled during lockdown

None of Oldham’s rubbish is being recycled during the coronavirus lockdown, bosses have confirmed.

The council has introduced temporary weekly waste collections with residents asked to put all their household waste and recyclable materials in the same bin.

The measure, which was put in place on Monday, aims to ensure people’s rubbish is collected during the pandemic and the streets are kept clean amid staff shortages.

However, it means that for the time being, none of residents’ recyclable items – food, plastic, glass and cans, or paper and card – are being re-purposed.

Instead they will be collected and dealt with as part of general household waste, which is burnt at a specialist waste-to-energy plant to generate electricity.

Helen Lockwood, Oldham council’s deputy chief executive, said it was ‘pretty much impossible’ to separate out rubbish and recycling when they are being collected in one bin.

“I just don’t think it’s possible to do that, so we’ve taken a really pragmatic approach really in consultation with many people that has resulted in us moving to weekly collections,” she added.

“But we do see it as a temporary measure, and we will come out of this, we’ll revert straight back and get our recycling rates back up again and work with that.”

She said they had generally had an ‘amazing response’ from the public around refuse, but there were still a ‘small minority’ of people who thought flytipping was acceptable.

Photos and footage from Crime Lane in Oldham this week show a significant amount of rubbish discarded at the side of the secluded road, with the culprits branded as ‘selfish’ by town hall leader Sean Fielding.

The dumped rubbish included an old mattress, furniture, cardboard boxes, bags of clothes and what appears to be numerous bin bags of household and garden waste.

“But our huge thanks go out to the majority of Oldham who are absolutely doing their bit and helping us to control the rubbish in a really managed way,” Ms Lockwood said. 

Under the new weekly bin collections, residents should now only put out their grey bin by 7am on the normal collection day, and no other bins will be collected ‘for the time being’.

Crews will also not be picking up any side waste or extra bagged rubbish.

But garden waste, rubble, soil and sand should never go in a grey bin as the council’s machinery ‘can’t take it’.

If the grey bin is not emptied, residents should take it back into their property and put it back out the following week on the usual collection day.

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