The campaign intends to raise awareness about everyone taking responsibility to care for and protect where they live, by getting involved with litter picks or other activities which may help keep the local environment clean and tidy.

There are already several community groups running their own litter picks. Getting involved can be a great way of meeting people and doing your bit to help keep the District a beautiful place to live, work and visit.

The Council is encouraging both individuals and groups to organise their own litter picks, during the official ‘Love Where You Live’ week which takes place during the week commencing 19 September 2011.

There will be a series of events taking place across the country, so why not get together with friends or family and take part? It doesn’t matter how long you spend picking litter or how much you collect, it all helps to improve our District.

The ‘Love Where You Live’ campaign is already on Facebook and Twitter, so log on to find out more about what is happening and join up with others to tackle the litter problem.

http://twitter.com/#!/LWYLengland
http://www.facebook.com/lovewhereyoulive

We’d love to hear your ideas for ‘Love Where You Live’ week events, or if you are planning to organise a litter pick, so email it to customerservices@rochford.gov.uk or call 01702 318111 and ask for Customer Services.

© Image supplied by Keep Britain Tidy

The Council aims to provide good quality streets and open spaces which are free from litter and other environmental crimes and help to make Rochford District a desirable place in which to live, work or visit.

You can help your community by:

• Using the street litter bins, town centre ones can collect recycling
• Wrapping chewing gum in its original wrapper and putting it in the litter bin
• Not throwing your cigarette butts on the ground. Use an ashtray, litter bin or an empty cigarette packet
• Keep your recyclables and nonrecyclables inside of the wheeled bin
• Clear up after your dog, it is the owner’s responsibility when a dog fouls on the street, road, grass verges or park areas
• Not parking where you want us to clean.

For more information about Dog Control orders and dog fouling – please visit our website pages here and here

If you see members of staff looking into your bins, please be aware this is being done to see where things are going wrong with the collections.

If a bin is found to contain a material that should not be in there,then it could be rejected by the recycling or composting facility,which could result in the whole load being sent to landfill, so it’s very important to get it right.

Here are some important points to remember:

Black sacks and bin liners cannot be accepted in the recyclables or compostables bin. The recycling and composting facilities cannot be sure of what they contain, so they will be rejected.

Do not place recyclables in plastic carrier bags. Carrier bags can be accepted in the recyclables bin, but only loose and not with other recyclables inside them. The recycling facility is unable to sort materials that are placed in a bag. Only use compostable liners or single sheets of newspaper to wrap food in your compostables bin.

Wrong items or ‘Contaminants’ can result in the recycling plant having to be shut down for periods of time so the machinery can be cleaned. For example, food in a recycling bin, could spoil or contaminate newspaper in the
same bin meaning it can’t be recycled.

We may leave your bin uncollected if there is anything in it which should not be in there. A sticker will be left on your bin informing you, and your bin will not be collected until the next collection and the item(s) will need to have been removed.

Even if there is only a small amount of contamination in your bin, when this is multiplied by the number of households on a round, it leads to significant levels of contamination in one vehicle load.

Litter bins

Look out for some new bins in the District which have separate compartments for recycling and non recycling.

These will be installed in shopping parades and car parks over the next few months. Please check carefully before putting your waste materials into the two compartments so that the correct items go into the correct bins.
For more information visit http://www.rochford.gov.uk/recycle