Across Bristol, residents have criticised the city council for failing to organise extra rubbish collections after Christmas.

In some streets, rubbish left over from Christmas is littering the pavements as residents have to wait more than two weeks after Christmas to have their rubbish collected.

Duncan McKean and other residents of Aubrey Road, Bedminster, are particularly angry, with their next rubbish collection due on January 5.

Mr McKean, 34, a mature student at the University of the West of England, said: "It seems really daft the rubbish not being taken as soon as possible after Christmas.

"Everybody down this street seems to have got a new television and the packaging is out in the road.

"It's crazy. There's going to be loads of people with an incredible amount of packaging, polystyrene and plastics that need to not be hanging around for another week messing up the streets."

In Stoke Lane, Westbury-on-Trym, Giles Hawker is also having issues with the timing of the rubbish and recycling collections.

His usual collection day is Thursday, but with that falling on Christmas Day, the rubbish was collected on Saturday, although only part of the rubbish and recycling he left outside his house was collected.

Accountant Mr Hawker, 36, who has a 12-month-old baby boy, said: "When we contacted the council we were told that, due to the collection day coinciding with Christmas and New Year's days, our next full collection was Monday, January 5 2009. That gives a delay of nearly four weeks on emptying dirty nappies from the bottom of our grey bin.

"I really felt for the customer services lady who returned our call, she had obviously had a lot of flak for the mismanagement of her superiors who are probably all still off on holiday."

He added: "Given that it is expected that people have more un-recyclable rubbish over Christmas for obvious reasons, you would have thought that they could have brought forward certain collections over December 22, 23 and 24 to lighten the load.

"Unfortunately, with our council's one-dimensional thinking, it has not been able to fit a quart into a pint pot between the two weeks and thus has again let the council tax payer bear the brunt of it.

"Our only salvation is that as it is so cold presently, no animals in their right minds are prepared to venture out to knock them over."

Bristol City Council spokesperson Kate Hartas said: "The council has strict targets to reduce waste going to landfill sites and so the aim is to reduce, reuse and recycle.

"Most Christmas waste can be recycled including food, wrapping, cardboard and Christmas trees."

Real trees can be put out for recycling on the normal collection day between January 5 and 24. They will be collected and composted with the food waste and cardboard.

Alternatively, for residents not on kerbside organic collections, trees can be taken to Bristol Zoo between January 5 and 24, or the household waste recycling centres in St Philip's or Avonmouth.

Paper wrapping paper and Christmas cards can be left for recycling in the black box in the normal kerbside collection.

No extra rubbish or recycling collections are being made in South Gloucestershire, but for the first black bin emptying after Christmas, up to three bags of additional waste will be collected alongside the bin.

In North Somerset, the published collection days over the Christmas and New Year period were wrong and an A4 flyer delivered during November informed residents of correct dates, which do not include any extra collections.

In Bath & North East Somerset, recycling, refuse and composting collections have also been subject to revised collection dates.

For residents whose normal recycling collection fell on Christmas day or Boxing Day, their next collection was either January 1 or January 2.