Super sweepers for cleaner Bury streets

Friday, 25 March 2022 15:50

By David Murphy

Bury Council has invested £225k in three Schmidt Swingo 100 state-of the art mechanical compact sweepers in another key step to providing an enhanced street care service and helping to keep Bury clean.

The low emission, multi-functional sweepers allow street care teams to complete a range of tasks more efficiently, including jet washing pavements, sucking up litter, and cleaning in those more difficult to reach places such as under benches and around litter bins.

The sweepers can also be run on biofuel which can reduce emissions by up to 90% meaning they’re not only good for keeping the streets clean, they’re much better for the environment too.

Councillor Alan Quinn, cabinet member for the environment, climate change and operations, said: “We’re always looking at ways to be more efficient and how we can keep Bury cleaner, safer and greener for our communities.

“We want our borough to be a place that everyone is proud of. The council’s street care teams do a great job, but they can’t be in all places at all times and the work they carry out costs more than £1.6m per year.

“Let’s all take pride in our community so that together we can make a real difference and keep our borough clean.”

The new pavement sweepers are mostly used in town centre pedestrianised areas and in busy surrounding streets that have a tendency to be heavily littered.

Issues with litter can be reported to the council at www.bury.gov.uk/reportit-litter.

Providing new street sweepers is part of Bury Council’s 3-year £10m full scale vehicle replacement programme. In addition to the 3 sweepers a further 27 vehicles have also been replaced, including 19 waste collection vehicles, 6 minibuses, a 4x4 pick-up for grounds maintenance, 6 minibuses and the mayoral car which now runs mostly on electric.

In the next 12 months a further 56 council vehicles will be replaced ranging from more sweepers, gully wagons and tippers, to small vans and more waste collection vehicles.