Record amounts of recycling and waste have been collected in Bath and North East Somerset over the Christmas period.

Residents are being thanked by Bath & North East Somerset Council for contributing to an extra 363 tonnes in total recycling and 84 tonnes in food waste alone compared to the same period in the previous year.

The increase equates to an additional 121 truckloads of recycling, including particularly high amounts of glass at 145 tonnes more than were collected 2021 and 92 extra tonnes of cardboard.

Between mid-December and the end of the first week of January, the council's collection crews handled a 19% increase in the amount of rubbish and recycling collected from households so far in 2020/21, compared with the same period in 2019/20.

In total, 1,735 tonnes of rubbish were collected alongside 2,689 tonnes of total recycling, including 678 tonnes of food waste.

With the help of B&NES residents, Dorothy House has raised more than £66,000 during their Christmas tree collections this year. More than 3,500 trees were collected with approximately 1,400 of these collected from residents living in postcodes BA1, BA2, BA3 & BS31. The council's depot and compositing site were used for the Christmas tree collections.

Councillor David Wood, cabinet member for Neighbourhood Services and Climate Emergency, said: "Fantastic efforts to recycle have been made by residents across Bath and North East Somerset and I'm delighted to see all these positive figures. We are all spending more time at home during the pandemic so thank you to everyone who recycled what they could rather than throwing useful materials away. Please keep up the good work in 2021.

"We've had a fair amount of cold and icy weather over the past few weeks so I'd like to congratulate our waste and recycling crews too for their hard work in difficult conditions."

Anyone unable to store unwanted items they would usually take to charity shops that are currently closed could list their items for free on websites including Freecycle, Freegle, Gumtree or NextDoor, or visit Share Repair Bath which is offering a reduced service during lockdown https://shareandrepair.org.uk/

People can find out how the food waste they recycle is transformed into electricity with nothing going to landfill in the council's video, produced in partnership with recycling and renewable energy company GENeco, which can be viewed by clicking HERE : the You Tube site