Exeter City Council is to remove a quarter of the city’s 800 litter bins to repurpose resources to concentrate on clearing rubbish from the streets instead.
It says checking and emptying its existing stock of litter bins requires 2,700 visits each week and that it has identified around 200 rarely-used “legacy bins” that are no longer cost-effective to deploy.
It says many of these bins are under-used because they are in the wrong place or are too close to other bins, and that the city centre will be “largely unaffected” by the changes.
Labour councillor Ruth Williams, who is responsible for Exeter recycling and refuse collection, said people should take their rubbish home with them if they can’t find a bin while out in the city.
A date for the bin removals, which are expected to take six weeks to complete, has not yet been set.
