THE coming Easter weekend means changes to recycling and rubbish collections across Somerset.

Collections that would usually happen on Friday (April 18), will now take place the following day, Saturday, instead.

Meanwhile, there are no collections on Easter Monday (April 21), with collections pushed back to one day later for the rest of the week, including Friday collections which will take place on Saturday, April 26.

To help crews speed up collections, households are being urged to put out their boxes, bags and bins by 7am on the day of collection, or the night before.

“With waste collections a day later a higher volume of waste is likely,” a Somerset Council spokesperson said.

“Squashing, crushing and flattening waste can help to reduce the number of trips that teams need to make to empty their trucks, as well as creating more space in residents’ containers.”

All 16 of Somerset’s recycling sites will be open over the Easter weekend; from 9am to 4pm on Saturday and Sunday, while on weekdays sites will be open from 9am to 6pm, although opening days vary.

The council is also urging people to be aware how almost all Easter egg packaging can be recycled in weekly kerbside collections, including:

Cardboard box – flattened and into your black recycling box.
Aluminium foil – scrunched and into your Bright Blue bag.
Plastic mould – into your Bright Blue Bag.

Chocolate bar and sweet wrappers, plastic bags and plastic-foil pouches, plastic ‘windows’ in boxes, and similar thin-soft plastic film are not yet recyclable in collections or at recycling centres, but many can be dropped off at supermarkets and some are taken in TerraCycle recycling schemes.