If you haven’t noticed (and I fear many haven’t) the council’s refuse collections are changing from next week.

The changes are a result of the council’s new collection contract. Many of the changes will not directly affect residents. Those that will include changing the collection method, so general waste and recycling can be taken together (meaning you won’t see the recycling linger after the rest has been collected), the return of garden waste collection (so you don’t have to either pay or take it to the tip yourself) and Putney residents will no longer be woken by a collection on a Saturday morning.

And that will result in the biggest change, since now the whole borough will be collected over five days (from Monday to Friday) instead of over six days (from Monday to Saturday).
Obviously it isn’t possible to lose Saturday collections in Putney without rejigging collections elsewhere, the effect is different from place to place but in Shaftesbury collection day changes from Thursday to Wednesday.

Extra resources are being put in place for the transition period, since there will inevitably be confusion to begin, but obviously the more people who get it right from the start the easier that transition will be: not least because many people rely on the ‘nudge’ of seeing their neighbours putting out rubbish to remind them to put out their own.

You can find out your new collection day on the council’s website.