WHEN morning rush hour begins, Oxford’s streets are usually clean and tidy for people travelling to work.

But it is the product of hours of hard work.

Oxford City Council’s street cleaning team starts at 5.30am each day and by 9am has already collected, on average, 4.2 tonnes of rubbish – the weight of about one third of a London Routemaster bus.

Staff illustrated the extent of the daily clean-up by piling it high in Bonn Square as part of the four-week Cleaner, Greener Oxford campaign on Wednesday.

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The campaign’s city council board member John Tanner said: “I want to thank most people for the way they go out of their way to put stuff into their litter bin but from that pile of rubbish we can see we need to reduce the amount of waste we produce by taking it home or not buying it in the first place.

“We see our staff at 5.30am cleaning up after us but we want to make their jobs easier. I’d rather spend that money on housing or improving parks and cycling facilities.”

The city council spends £436,000 a year – £1,200 per day – on cleaning up litter.

In the 2013/14 financial year, 1,541 tonnes of litter were picked up from bins and streets by about 50 staff, the equivalent of 154 full dust carts – 46 tonnes more than in 2012/13.

However, between 2010 and 2012, more than 500 tonnes more rubbish was collected each year.

Litter is put in recyclable and non-recyclable containers and taken to Redbridge Waste Recycling Centre for sorting. The council has plans to introduce more recycling bins on streets and had a domestic recycling rate of 45 per cent last year.

Mr Tanner said: “We’ve been running the campaign for five years and the city centre is a lot cleaner than it used to be.

“I was struck at how many of those bags had a mixture of plastic bottles and card with things that can’t be recycled like orange peels. But because they’re all in one bag they end up in the landfill or incinerator.”

Street cleaning team leader And-rew Wright said fast-food cartons and cigarette ends are a problem.

He said: “It does get bad overnight. We start early and by about 9am we’ve cleared most of the litter in the city centre so people don’t realise there’s a problem.”

The Cleaner, Greener Oxford campaign, backed by the Oxford Mail, runs until Friday, October 10.


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