Help us improve rubbish disposal in your building or estate

We want to make it a more pleasant experience for residents to dispose of their rubbish, so we’re working with our cleaning contractors to try and improve the cleanliness of our bin areas on schemes where residents share bins.  One of the biggest issues we’ve noticed is when the local authority’s weekly rubbish or recycling collections are missed, as it can cause rubbish to build up and overflow. The most common reasons for missed collections on schemes we manage are difficulty accessing or retrieving rubbish/ recycling, and contaminated recycled waste. In this article, you can find more about these issues, what we're doing to avoid them happening and how you can help us with this to ensure your waste is collected when it should be.

Access issues

Collections can be missed if the local authority's refuse collectors are unable to freely access bins for collection. We work with local authorities to ensure they have the necessary fobs or keys needed to access bin stores on our schemes, or by moving bins in advance to a suitable location for collection. If there are bin bags or bulk waste items blocking the bins, the collection will not take place.

There are many ways you can work with us to make sure your weekly rubbish and recycling collections take place.

• Ensure no bulk items are left in the bin store or around your estate. Visit your local authority’s website for details on how to correctly dispose of bulk items in your area.
• Make use of all bins provided within the bin store, not just those at the front.
• Bag all your general waste items correctly and leave no items loose on the floor.
• Make sure recyclable items are flattened or crushed and put in the correct recycling bin. This avoids taking up unnecessary space which can overflow into the general waste bins.

Contamination of recycling bins

The main reason for missed or skipped recycling bin collection is contamination. If bulk items, general waste or any items which are not recycled by your council are put in the recycling bins, the bins will not be collected until the items have been removed. Most recycling bins have images and a description detailed on the bin of what can and cannot be put in it. Your local authority will also have information on their website about what they will recycle.

The most common items which can be recycled include:

• glass bottles and jars  
• tins and cans 
• cardboard 
• clean foil
• plastics - rigid plastic food containers and bottles only.

How to report issues or concerns about waste collection

Whilst we aim to avoid these issues happening on our schemes, we need to know if they do occur so we can resolve them. We encourage you to contact us to report any problems with your bin stores or waste collection as soon as you have concerns, such as overflowing bins or contamination in recycling bins. Once reported, we can look to address these issues and prevent missed collections.

Please keep in mind that there are additional costs involved when we have to ask our cleaning contractors to help us resolve these issues, and these costs can factor into changes in service charges. This is why it’s really important that you and your neighbours work dispose of your waste correctly and work with us to keep your bin stores in a great condition. If there are issues with the bin store in your building which need addressing, or if you have ideas for improvements that can be made, we would also love to hear from you. You can contact us to report issues or share your ideas by:

• email customerservice@networkhomes.org.uk
• tweet us at @asknetworkhomes, or message us on Facebook at @networkhomesuk
• complete a Contact Us form
• call us on 0300 373 3000.

Contact us