Ribble Valley Festive Recycling and Refuse Collection

Collections scheduled for Christmas Day and New Years Day, including blue and burgundy bins and white sacks, will now take place on Saturday, 23 December and Tuesday 2 January 2024.

All other collection days over the festive fortnight will take place a day later, so if your normal collection day is a Tuesday, your refuse will now be collected on a Wednesday, and so on.

There will be no green bin collections over Christmas and all collections return to normal the week beginning 8 January 2024.

Don’t forget Christmas wrapping paper, cards and packaging can be recycled and put in your white sack.

If your white sack is normally collected on a blue bin week, it will be collected the weeks starting 18 December and 1 January. If it is normally collected on a green bin week, it will be collected on the week starting 25 December.

Christmas trees should be chopped up and placed inside green bins, or if you are not on the green bin service tied up and left with burgundy bins or lilac sacks. They can also be taken to the household waste recycling centres in Clitheroe and Longridge.

And please think before you bin batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries, typically found in anything rechargeable, such as laptops and mobile phones; nickel-cadmium batteries found in remote controls and all other rechargeable batteries contain chemicals that can ignite.

They can be taken back to the shop or supermarket you bought them from, or household waste disposal centres in Clitheroe and Longridge, where they will be stripped and recycled or disposed of as hazardous waste.

Finally, please put your bins out by 7.30am on collection day and park your cars considerately, so that refuse wagons can access your street and manoeuvre safely.

Further information on recycling and refuse collection is available from ribblevalley.gov.uk or 01200 425111.

I’m dreaming of a green Christmas:

• Britons will eat more than 175million mince pies this Christmas – their foil cases can be recycled
• More than 19,000 tonnes of turkey will be consumed over Christmas, much of it packaged in recyclable foil trays
• Over 500million extra canned drinks will be consumed over Christmas – recycling one aluminium drink can save enough energy to run a set of Christmas tree lights for two hours
• Over six million real Christmas trees will be bought in Britain, the majority of which will be thrown away, generating 160,000 tonnes of waste equating to 21 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower
• The UK will consume over five million jars of mincemeat, 12 million jars of pickles and six million jars of cranberries – recycling the jars can save enough energy to boil the water for 60million cups of tea
• Over 83 square kilometres of wrapping paper will be thrown away in the UK over Christmas, enough to gift wrap Jersey once or Hyde Park 33 times – wrapping paper can be shredded, recycled and even used to clean windows