SORTED waste partnership news

With spring's varied weather, we have a reminder of our waste and weather guidance. Plus:

If you are a garden waste subscriber, do not miss your renewal notice

Recycling Depots opening hours

Annual garden waste subscriptions run from 1 April and renewal letters will be sent out soon. Ensure you reapply quickly to benefit from the full annual service. If you do not renew, your collections will stop from 31 March. New subscribers can find out more on the SWP website.

While we encourage everyone to compost at home, the garden waste service offers a handy kerbside recycling route for bulkier materials, such as small branches, hedge trimmings and more

All the garden waste we collect at the kerbside and from our 16 recycling centres is turned into compost here in Somerset.

Recycling site upgrades bring later hours – Somerset's recycling sites opening hours are being upgraded from Monday 1 April 2019 with full weekend opening and later weekday opening hours. As first announced last year, these changes will mean:

All 16 sites will open every Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 4pm all year.

Later weekday closing in summer (6pm Apr-Sep) and winter (5pm Oct-Mar)

All sites will start work at 9am reflecting low user numbers early in the day,

An end to underused 7pm Monday evenings

Same or extra days open at 10 sites, including Chard and Wells (Dulcote)

Crewkerne and Dulverton, the sites with lowest use and highest per visit costs, will have fewer hours but avoid closure, and they will both end their £2 cash entry fees by April 2020.

These changes are part of Somerset waste services' ongoing transformation, from extra weekly recycling and three-weekly rubbish collections that will be rolled out from 2020 to the move away from landfilling refuse next year.

How your local site will work from 1 April:

Somerton: Open daily except Mon-Tue

Street: Open daily except Thu-Fri

Taunton (Priorswood): Open seven days a week

Consumer pressure has ensured a growing range of local collection points funded by product manufacturers to enable more recycling of their everyday items. One company taking a lead is TerraCycle. It works with manufacturers, retailers and charities to run collection points, which help divert items from rubbish that are difficult and thus costly to recycle, from cat food packaging to plastic toothbrushes. For instance, TerraCycle recently announced that it was working with Acuvue to offer a contact lens recycling programme, from lenses themselves to their packaging. Among many schemes, they have partnered with Ella's Kitchen to recycle baby food pouches and snack wrappers, Febreze to recycle air freshener and home care waste, as well as Colgate to recycle oral care products and their packaging. Positively, many of TerraCycle's schemes accept products and packaging from other suppliers, i.e. the Walkers scheme accepts crisp packets from other manufacturers. For more information and to find the types of products accepted and locations of the collection points, visit

More on Somerset Waste Partnership, our services and preventing waste See our website for lots more information on waste and recycling services and what more you can to do to reduce, reuse and recycle. Contact your local council customer services helpline if you need assistance with our services.