City’s residents and Waste Collection staff praised and asked to keep up the good work

13 April 2020

Aberdeen City Council’s Waste Collection teams and the city’s residents were praised today (Monday 13 April) for their work and cooperation during the current Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown.

Waste Collection teams have maintained collections of general waste throughout the pandemic despite the changes required to maintain social distancing and keep themselves and the public safe. With the help of volunteers from among the Council’s staff, mixed recycling waste collections will resume next Monday (20 April) and residents should download their temporary collection calendar now from the Council website.

Staff and residents have been displaying mutual cooperation at this difficult and challenging time.

A Council spokesperson said: “Our collection teams work hard year-round and they have really stepped up in the past few weeks, adopting different ways of working to keep delivering essential services to our customers. They deserve a lot praise for a job that often goes unnoticed.

“Our customers understand the difficult circumstances we have been faced with and the need for reduced services recently and we appreciate their patience.

“However while the vast majority of residents have been fantastic in ensuring that social distancing is maintained and that everyone stays safe, sadly, there have been some reports of isolated instances in which residents have approached and verbally abused staff, some of whom are less experienced as they are volunteers, going about their work. Thankfully, these incidents are very much in the minority.

“As we look forward to resuming mixed waste collections next week, we’d just like to remind everyone that social distancing must be maintained with our staff allowed to go about their work free from harassment during these extraordinary times.”

Household brown bin collections resumed last week and mixed recycling collections will resume from Monday 20 April. Each will then follow a 4 weekly collection schedule. Collections of general waste bins will continue to be emptied fortnightly as before. Residents should download their temporary collection calendar at: www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/bincollections.

The collections are:

Brown bins – began w/c 6 and 13 April;

Mixed recycling bins - collected w/c 20 April and w/b 27 April;

And thereafter each will be emptied on a 4-week cycle.

General waste - fortnightly collection.

Although dates and frequencies are changing, the brown bin and mixed recycling collections will still be on a household’s usual collection day.