{"id":638920,"date":"2026-06-14T22:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T22:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/638920\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T22:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T22:22:12","slug":"new-recycling-service-hit-by-teething-problems-before-a-bin-has-been-emptied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/638920\/","title":{"rendered":"New recycling service hit by ‘teething problems’ – before a bin has been emptied"},"content":{"rendered":"

Staffordshire Moorlands District Council is launching weekly food waste collections – three months after the national deadline<\/p>\n

Council chiefs insist there will be no further delays to a new recycling service – despite it being hit with ‘teething problems’. Staffordshire Moorlands District Council<\/a> is introducing weekly food waste collections and a new garden waste charge as part of a national move to ‘simpler’ recycling.<\/p>\n

The government told councils to start their weekly food waste services by 31 March, but SMDC was one of a number of authorities to miss the deadline, blaming national supply chain issues. While SMDC is still awaiting the delivery of seven new vehicles, bosses say the revamped service will start on 29 June as planned.<\/p>\n

The council currently has ‘co-mingled’ fortnightly collections for food and garden waste.<\/a> With the move to weekly food waste collections, residents have the option of paying \u00a346 a year to continue receiving a garden waste service.<\/p>\n

But some people have experienced problems signing up for the collections on the council’s website.<\/p>\n

Councillor Charlotte Atkins, cabinet member for services, acknowledged the website issues and said residents are being given support. She told the service delivery overview and scrutiny panel that the 8,130 garden waste subscriptions made at the time of the meeting – an 18 per cent take up rate – represented good progress.<\/p>\n

Cllr Atkins said: “The process has now begun and I think it’s fair to say that there have been some issues. Some people have found the website difficult to navigate. I myself didn’t have a problem but I was in reception earlier and there was a lady who couldn’t get to the point where you pay. But I’m glad to say our brilliant customer service team managed to resolve that in under five minutes.<\/p>\n

“I believe the demand on customer services has gone down since those first couple of weeks. We now see 18 per cent of people have signed up, which is pretty good going for the start of the process.”<\/p>\n

The council’s waste management company AES is delivering new food waste caddies to residents on a phased basis, with 10,000 delivered at the time of the meeting. But the panel was told the council was still awaiting delivery of seven dedicated food waste collection vehicles.<\/p>\n

Elaine Hallworth, head of leisure and environment, said: “Across the UK there are delays in terms of production, so this has always been a risk from the beginning. If they are not on time for the end of the month, we’ll have hire vehicles, which is one of the conditions of the contract. But we will be starting this on the date we have said we will be starting. This is not unique to this council, it’s happening at other councils.”<\/p>\n

Cllr Atkins emphasised that the council has been ordered by government to change its ‘very efficient’ existing recycling system.<\/p>\n

She added: “Clearly when you have a service that previously was free and now had to be paid for, there are going to be people who aren’t happy. But by and large the sessions we’ve had in market places have been relatively positive. There have been teething problems. But the customer services team have dealt with them very efficiently.”<\/p>\n

But Cllr Atkins said she wanted to see more work done to promote the council’s offer of subsidised compost bins, as only 12 have been purchased so far.<\/p>\n

Get daily headlines and breaking news emailed to you – it\u2019s FREE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Staffordshire Moorlands District Council is launching weekly food waste collections – three months after the national deadline Council…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,122071,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-638920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-staffordshire-moorlands-district-council","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}