Refuse collection crews in Kirklees emptied nine million bins last year – 99.7% of them on time.

Kirklees Council has revealed the stats behind the district’s bin lorry operation.

Each week bins crews collect 188,797 green and grey bins from residents and 5,637 trade bins from businesses. Some 145 special bins are also collected from primary and secondary schools during term time.

The bins are spread over 157 square miles in towns, villages and remote farms across Kirklees and the service is run from two depots, one in Huddersfield and the other in Dewsbury. Collections run from Monday to Saturday for domestic and trade waste.

On an average winter week, the two depots have just short of 50 wagons with two loaders and one driver apiece out on the roads of Kirklees.

Clr Will Simpson, Cabinet member for culture and greener Kirklees, said: “Our successful collection rate for bins stands at 99.7% which, given the size and challenging landscape of Kirklees, is a statistic that shows how tirelessly our collection teams have worked to achieve such an outstanding result.

“Obviously, we don’t want any single bin to be missed but sometimes – 0.3% of the time in our case – it’s not always possible for a number of reasons.

“When it does happen, we will always endeavour to return as quickly as we can to make sure every single bin is collected.

“For instance, at the end of November, the heavy snow prevented us from collecting 6,000 domestic bins on the Monday, that’s one third of the Monday collection.

“We let residents know online and through social media that there might be problems. By Wednesday, every one of those 6,000 missed bins had been collected and the service was back on track.”