On the bins: Spending the day with refuse team

The time had not long gone 07:00 GMT in the "nerve centre" of Burntwood's waste depot.

Wearing a hi-vis jacket, I gazed at screens tracking bin lorries in real time and a whiteboard covered in markings that meant very little to me but apparently helped keep the operation running.

It is from here that 30 vehicles and around 80 staff head out every day to service 88,000 properties as part of the joint Lichfield and Tamworth waste service.

Each year they make 5.3 million collections, picking up 22,000 tonnes of residual waste and 9,000 tonnes of recycling.

My guide for the morning was Lichfield District Council operations manager Darren Phillips.

"We can see almost everything," he said.

"Down to driving styles, fuel economy, how much weight's on a vehicle and we monitor that on a daily basis to become more efficient."

From the depot we headed out to Edingale, a quiet village where a crew was already at work.

Darren told me people still regularly bring out cups of tea and biscuits for crews, particularly in rural areas where people are more lonely.

It is a varied patch where villages like this one sit alongside the busy urban areas of Lichfield and Tamworth.

I climbed into the cab with driver Mark Cox, who has been doing the job for 24 years.

"It's a lot of mental work to get around the process and get the job done," he said.

"You've got to be on your toes all the time. You don't want to be switching off."

There are big changes coming to the service, as the BBC has been exploring with our day of coverage related to waste.

The government is requiring every council in England to introduce weekly food waste collections and Lichfield is rolling out new trucks and caddies to every home.

Later, we visited a waste roadshow in Lichfield city centre, where there were educational resources and advice for residents preparing for the switch.

Christine Butler, 72, from Burntwood, said she was on board.

"What do you do with your food otherwise?" she asked. "I'm happy to do it."

There may not be such optimism in Birmingham, where a bin strike continues with no end in sight and no form of recycling has been collected for more than a year.

It is a situation that has left Christine feeling grateful to be out of the city.

"It's shocking," she added.

"I don't know how they manage. It looks horrendous with things piled up in the streets.

"We have a good service in Lichfield, it works very well."

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