Christmas Bin Collections and City Council opening hours

The Christmas holidays always bring some disruption to bin collections owing to the cluster of bank holidays. This year is no exception and collections usually scheduled between Boxing Day and January 6th are all moved back one day.

This means if your bins are due to be collected on Thursdays, then they won't be collected on the 29th December and 5th January, but will instead be collected on Friday 30th and and Friday 6th January.

Collections should be back to normal on the week starting Monday 9th January.

On the subject of bins and Christmas, after the holidays real Christmas trees can be recycled by either taking them to Cherry Hinton Hall, or (more likely from this side of Cambridge) by cutting them up and placing in Green bins.

More details can be found on the Christmas Opening pages of the City Council website.

Cambridge City Council have also published details of opening hours for the Service Centre, City Homes and King's Hedges Learner pool (among others). These can all be found on that page.

Hopefully we won't have the same problems with snow as we had last year, but if we do then keep an eye on the City Council webpage for service updates.

If you have any problems or comments on the services, please let the team know.

Reducing waste: food events in King's Hedges

Supported by Cambridge City's Recycling Champions three events have been arranged for the "Love food, hate waste" campaign. These are intended to be fun events to give ideas about how to reduce food bills and reduce rubbish in the bin.

The first event was on Thursday last week with a butcher.

The next two events are both at Arbury Community Centre, and are free with no need to book. Just turn up.

On Thursday 14 April there is a family food fair, with lots of stalls about different ways to feed a family. The hope is for it to be a fun family activity during the school holidays. It runs from 10am until 1pm.

Finally on Thursday 28 April at 10.30am a professional chef will be demonstrating how to make tasty meals out of leftovers and common store cupboard ingredients. The results will be available for tasting by the audience.

Christmas and New Year bin collections

We are getting close to Christmas and the changes to bin collections that causes.

This year Christmas and New Years day are both on a Saturday, and the bank holidays are on Monday and Tuesday.

The plan is to collect Monday and Tuesday routes on the Tuesday and leave other days unaffected.

The full details of other Christmas service changes are on the City Council website.

Full details of waste collection changes:

Regular collection date	Revised collection date
Friday 24 December	no change
Monday 27 December	Tuesday 28 December
Tuesday 28 December	no change
Wednesday 29 December	no change
Thursday 30 December	no change
Friday 31 December	no change
Monday 3 January	Tuesday 4 January
Tuesday 4 January	no change

I think this means most people in King's Hedges are unaffected by the changes this year.

I hope that my picture from last year isn't repeated, but in case it is keep an eye on the City's service updates page for more information.

Christmas eve missed collection

Due to even more snow fall collections had to be suspended on Christmas Eve. Most of King's Hedges has Thursday collections so we were hit by this.

Having checked the Service Updates page at 3:30pm on Wednesday 30th the plan is...

• Black bin collection: it was planned to clear back bins on Wednesday 30th December. If your bin was out and not collected call the City Council on 01223 457000 or 01223 458282
• Green and blue bin collections: will be "collected on their next scheduled collection date, in the week commencing 4 or 13 January", which means if you were due blue and green on Christmas Eve your bin will be collected on Thursday 7th January. This also applies to sacks and boxes.

If you have problems you can put excess waste in the black bin or use the recycling centres, but this is not ideal. Extra recycling can also be put out in your old boxes if you have them.

Sorry for the disruption but controlling a bin lorry on snowy and icy roads is not easy. Every effort was made to collect as much as possible, and the decision to suspend collections was taken very reluctantly indeed.

Tomorrow's scheduled collections are as per usual if the BBC is correct that we will have lots of drizzle and no snow tonight.

(If your collection is Friday remember that it will be delayed to Saturday due to New Years day.)