Welcome to the West Devon Borough Council website.

How are the collections changing?

West Devon Borough Council are improving services by collecting a wider variety of recycling materials at the kerbside on a weekly basis. These include plastic bottles, domestic batteries, textiles, mobile phones and spectacles. Food waste will be collected on the same, specially adapted recycling vehicles. Garden collections will be offered to all suitable households and will alternate with refuse collections.

When are things changing?

Most residents will see changes to their waste collections starting in late summer and will be informed in advance via a service guide delivered to the doorstep. This information will give details of collection days and what items go into each container.

Residents are asked to continue putting their waste out as they have been doing until they are notified that the new service is starting.

For the time being, garden waste collections will follow the same pattern of collection.

For changes to collection dates due to bank holidays please see 'Find your collection day' on the left of this page.

Staff will also be visiting as many areas as possible over the next few months to answer residents questions. See attachment below for dates and venues. If you would like an officer to attend your local group to discuss the changes please contact Terri Easton on 01822 813600.

Why are we changing the way we collect waste?

Last year in West Devon, we landfilled approximately 10,900 tonnes of household waste. A significant amount of that waste could have been recycled but we continue to throw away tonnes of valuable resources every day. In Devon, and nationally, we are rapidly running out of landfill space to bury our rubbish.

The Government has set all councils challenging targets to reduce the amount of waste produced by households and improve our recycling and composting rates. Statutory financial penalties will be incurred if we do not cut the amount of biodegradable waste (such as food, garden waste, paper and card) being landfilled. These penalties could impact on future council tax bills if our waste reduction and recycling performance doesn't continue to improve.

We currently recycle around 43% of our waste in West Devon and recent surveys have shown that residents are happy with our services. However, there are improvements that must be made if West Devon is to continue to offer both a good value waste and recycling collection service and meet statutory government targets.

For example, we can now extend the garden and food waste collections to all suitable households and have redesigned our collection rounds in order to minimise vehicle movements, thus reducing carbon dioxide emissions.