PEOPLE in west Wiltshire need no longer suffer with a smelly waste bin now that a Trowbridge man has started offering a bin cleaning service for homes.

Simon Chown, 44, of Paxcroft Mead, has started travelling around the county to help put an end to smelly wheelie bins.

Having previously worked for the company which won a contract for waste management in Wiltshire, Mr Chown decided to move into a different area of waste management and work for himself.

Mr Chown, a father-of-two, said: “I got the idea when I was working in North Somerset and there was also a bin cleaning service with the waste management.

“I thought about it and it went on the back burner. After a while I decided to start my own bin cleaning service.

“I started in the second week of January and already have about 80-100 houses that I visit but I am looking to have about 1,500-2,000 customers – I think the maximum I can do in one day is about 100 bins.

“I wash the bins every four weeks on the day of the emptying. At the moment I am handing out flyers and posting them through people’s letterboxes, but cold calling isn’t always the best. There are doors with no flyers or no cold callers signs up.”

The one-man operation sees Mr Chown driving his special van to clean bins in Trowbridge, Warminster and Westbury and he hopes to extend the service to cover the whole of Wiltshire “I have been offering the first cleaning for £2.50 and if someone then wants the service regularly it will go up to £3.99 per wash.

“At the moment with the cold weather, bins aren’t smelling that much but when it gets to summer it will become more of a problem,” he added.

The service, part of the Green Cleen company based in Staffordshire, is now up and running.

Mr Chown said: “Green Cleen has been going for the past 20 years and is a well-established business. There are other people that do similar services but I work for an official company.

“If people leave food waste in their bins then it can be left for up to two weeks which can cause a smell and attract insects and rats. The cleaning means that this won’t happen and it will solve the bad smell.

To find out more, Anyone who may be interested in having their bin washed regularly can call Mr Chown on 07902 163569, or email wilts@greencleen.co.uk.

Alternatively visit the website at www.greencleen.co.uk/Wiltshire.