Quiet post-Christmas opening at Longue Hougue recycling

Normally the day after Boxing Day is one of the household waste site’s busiest days as islanders clear up after Christmas. Last year, as it reopened, there were 740 visitors to the site, nearly 100 an hour. But as the site reopened on Saturday morning, people were only finding a queue of two or three cars at most.

Waste recycling operative Chris Bowring said there had been a queue at 8am when the site opened.

‘That went round the corner,’ he said.

‘But it disappeared pretty quickly and it’s been looking like a relatively normal day. We were expecting to be much busier than this.’

However, patience with recycling may be a trend. On average around 3,100 cars visit the site per week and last year that was only up by about 100 cars in the week before and the week after Christmas.

Those visiting the site were mostly recycling cardboard and paper as blue bags for plastic and tins had been collected this week.

Lisa Sylvester had a whole car full.

‘It’s mostly wrapping paper and packaging from the kids’ presents,’ she said.

‘I was expecting it to be really busy today so it’s a pleasant surprise to find it so quiet.’

Some people might have been put off by the strong cold easterly winds that were blowing through the site.

However, this was the motivation for at least one car’s trip.

‘We had 10 bags of wrapping paper and cardboard,’ said Etienne May, who was being assisted by his seven-year-old daughter Zerin.

‘With the wind they were starting to blow around, so we thought we should get rid of them. It was a relief that we were able to drive straight in.’

One person not recycling cardboard was Andrew Brown, who had brought in the first Christmas tree, just two days after the big day.

‘My wife is a nurse and with her shift work we had to celebrate Christmas on the 21st,’ he said.

‘She was off again today and wanted to get cleared up.’