Plymouth City Council is preparing to re-open Chelson Meadow household recycling centre for some items in the next couple of weeks.
We took the difficult decision to close both of our recycling centres at the start of the COVID-19 lockdown to focus our resources on essential brown and green bin collections and to ensure the safety of staff and customers.
Councillor Sue Dann, Cabinet Member for Environment and Street Scene, said: “We know that people are keen to see our recycling service up and running again so that they can get on with those projects around the home and dispose of their extra waste responsibly.
“Residents want to enjoy their gardens, particularly as we approach the warmer months and they are spending so much more of their time at home.
“However, public safety has to be our number one priority and, with limited staff available and ‘stay at home’ guidance still in place, any services must be reintroduced gradually and kept under constant review.
“Our garden waste and bulky waste collections are currently suspended to ensure we have enough drivers and loaders to keep our essential brown and green bin collections going.
“But we are planning on partially re-opening Chelson Meadow, so that people who aren’t able to compost can dispose of their garden waste, as well as some other selected items of household rubbish they are struggling to fit in their brown bin or store at home.
“We will be working at a significantly reduced capacity and will therefore only be accepting limited items initially.
“Measures will be in place to ensure safe distancing at all times and there will be traffic management to control numbers accessing the site, to help avoid the severe tailbacks we saw along Laira Bridge and Billacombe Road before closure.
“We will review each day and if there are no issues we will hopefully look to reintroduce other services gradually, on a phase-by-phase basis.”
The Government is expected to publish amended guidance for waste collection sites shortly and further details on arrangements for the partial re-opening of Chelson Meadow will follow.
See our COVID-19 waste page for the latest updates.