Covid-19 impact on waste services in Essex

Tuesday 5 January 2021

All recycling centres in Essex remain open during normal operating hours. Wherever possible, please use your kerbside collections to dispose of your household waste and recycling. This is the safest and easiest method.

Social distancing measures and new site restrictions are in place to ensure the safety of residents and site staff. Therefore, no one is permitted to unload their vehicle whilst queuing. Users will only be allowed on site in order of arrival, so no one is permitted to walk in waste from their vehicle.

If you have garden waste to get rid of, you can always try home composting. It’s a great alternative and there are many ways to get started.

If you use a private company or contractor to dispose of your waste, please keep a safe distance from other people and ensure they will dispose of your waste responsibly.

Do not visit a recycling centre if you are self-isolating or showing any symptoms of Covid-19. For more information please check the latest government guidance.

Getting rid of waste if you're self-isolating or have coronavirus

If you're asked to self-isolate, either as a precaution or because you're confirmed to have Covid-19, follow this advice to get rid of household waste. This is to make sure the virus doesn't spread via personal waste.

For waste that is heavily contaminated, such as tissues that have been coughed in and cleaning cloths, you need to:

• place securely in a plastic bag or bin liner
• place this plastic bag in another plastic bag and securely tie it
• store these bags separately to other waste for at least 72 hours before placing it in your general rubbish collection

Regular household recycling and waste should be treated as normal.

Changes to recycling and waste collections

All local councils across Essex are working hard to minimise the impact on your recycling and waste collections and we appreciate your understanding if services do change.

You can keep up to date with waste and recycling services in Essex by following @loveessexuk on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram or using the webpage pages below.

Ways to help your collection crews 

Recycling and waste collection crews are working hard on the frontline every day to ensure our bins, bags and boxes are collected.

There are a number of ways you can help support your collection crews:

• place your bins, boxes and bags at the kerbside ready for your collection
• avoid putting out additional waste for collection as collection vehicles will fill up quicker
• be mindful of where you park your car on collection day so that collection vehicles can get through
• maintain at least 2 metres and don’t approach collection crews
• continue to treat collection crews with respect

How to reduce your waste at home

To help reduce the amount of rubbish going in your waste collections, we’ve pulled together some handy tips and ideas to save items from the bin. 

Find out more about waste and recycling

Recycling centre policy and site restrictions

Ideas on how to reduce your household waste