Nairn - new Highland Council refuse collection schedules

(Please see UPDATE at end)

Earlier this month Highland Council introduced new recycling procedures, which involve all households being issued with an additional blue 'wheelie bin' to supplement the green 'wheelie bin' everyone already has, plus of course the brown 'wheelie bin' that some housegolds have for the collection of garden waste.

All households in the Nairn area received a pack a couple of weeks ago with a calendar of the new collections schedule for different categories of waste, together with a leaflet explaining in some detail what may be put in each type of 'wheelie bin'. Of course it remains possible to visit the Nairn recycling centre outside Nairn on the Grantown-on-Spey road (see my blog article about that and some other issues here) to dispose of bulkier items, specially between the dates when regular kerb collections are made; that earlier article contains a photographs of the opening times in November 2009 - current opening times are listed here, which at this time are shown as:

Nairn Recycling Centre Park Quarry on the A939 Nairn IV12 5QN Summer 1st April - 30th September Monday to Friday 10.00am - 7.00pm Saturday - Sunday 10.00am - 4.30pm Winter 1st October - 31st March Wednesday to Sunday 10.00am - 4.30pm.

Below are images of the front cover of the 'Recyclying Guide' and of the collection calandar for the year 2011/12 (July 2011 through June 2012), but enlargements of both these images and of the rest of the 'Recyclying Guide' and of the collection calendar for the following year (July 2012 through June 2013) are available here; this link is also shown in the table below:

Nairn - new Highland Council refuse collection schedules from July 2011 Click here to see enlargements of both the photographs below, together with several additonal photographs. Click here to see enlargements of both the photographs above, together with several additonal photographs.

When it was first announced some months ago (perhaps late last year, or perhaps earlier this year, I don't remember exactly when) that there were going to be changes to Highland Council's refuse collection procedures, my recollection is that it was said to be an exercise to reduce refuse collections from once every week to once every two weeks, with the aim of saving money, to help plug the gap between what income Highland Council receives in various forms and what it spends (in other words to reduce its large budgetary deficit). However, this exercise seems to have 'morphed' into a completely different exercise, with the aim of 'reduce', 'reuse' and 'recycle'. I don't necessarily quarrel with this, but it does seem to be VERY good business for the manufacturers of 'wheelie bins' - shares in such companies must be very buoyant at present, I would imagine, as Highland Council is certainly not the only local authority in the wider UK and Scotland which is undertaking this kind of exercise. Also, weekly refuse collections have simply been replaced by weekly collections categorised into the different kinds of refuse - with the requirement on householders to separate their waste into those categories, not perhaps a 'bad' or terribly 'cumbersome' requirement in itself, but what it does require of householders is to provide space for not just one 'wheelie bin', but at least two and in some cases three - not everyone has the space to store these additional 'wheelie bins' conveniently or in a tidy manner. Finally, it is hard to believe that this massive exercise will result in the saving of any money whatsoever, but if I am wrong about this I shall be glad to have evidence provided.

UPDATE (Sunday 9NOV2014 16.55)You can download a calendar of the refuse collection schedule for your street/area within Highland Council by visiting its website here. Enter your area/town by clicking on the drop-down menu in the "category" box and your town and/or street name (leave out 'street', 'avenue', 'terrace' etc, insert only the actual name) in the "keywords” box. Once you find your area, you can download the collection schedule, which will be in .pdf format. Currently available are refuse collection schedules for the period April 2014 to March 2016.