Orkney Islands Council has introduced a new tag for bins to stop householders getting mixed up on collection days.
The yellow tags will tell people what bin they should have put out and also have a QR code that people can scan on their smartphone to view collections coming up for their area.
They were redesigned following feedback from the council’s waste crews who felt the old tags did not have enough information on them to help explain to householders why a bin had not been emptied.
Bin contamination
When the wrong bins are put out, crews cannot empty them or it will contaminate the rest of the load.
In December, it was revealed that Orkney’s recycling rate was way below the Scottish average, with only 23.4% being recycled compared to 42% across the country.
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’
“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.”
The yellow tags follow on from the red tags introduced last month, which enables people to easily reorder a new bin to replace damaged ones.
To help householders keep up with what is being collected when, the council does a Friday reminder of the recycling collections for the week ahead on its Facebook page.
Households can also look up their bin collection schedule for upcoming weeks on the council’s website.
Conversation