South Kesteven District Council's waste and recycling team has been hailed the best in the country at a prestigious annual awards event.
Crews and office staff were recognised as the Best Service Team for Waste, Recycling and Street Scene at the Association for Public Service Excellence conference and awards event.
It follows last year's success at the same event when SKDC was crowned Most Improved Performer in the Refuse Collection category.
Cabinet Member for Environment and Waste, Cllr Rhys Baker, said: "These awards honour the organisations, individuals, and teams leading the way in how they deliver the services that every household needs.
"It is just reward for the hard work and first-class results of our major projects to introduce separate ‘twin stream’ paper and card collections, plus a kerbside battery recycling service and bring modern, new vehicles on-stream. Despite facing multiple obstacles, the team showed resilience and creativity resulting in improved services for the residents of South Kesteven.
"We now start our project to implement new, streamlined and zoned collection rounds for a more resilient, modern and higher-quality service.”
Success was demonstrated by contamination of silver bin recycling falling from 30% to 5% - and by 1,220kg of batteries being collected in the first month.
Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee Chairman, Cllr Elvis Stooke, added: "I am proud that SKDC's waste and recycling team has been named Best Service Team as I know they were up against some stiff competition.
"This public-facing team, out all year in all weather, play a crucial role not only in taking away the rubbish, but also helping educate and inform residents on how to effectively reduce their waste and recycle as much as they can."
Residents in South Kesteven are this week experiencing their first paper/card recycling week under a new system of re-drawn rounds to better suit modern needs.
Behind-the-scenes work in preparation included writing to every address with a personalised leaflet explaining how their bin days will change and adding a new postcode look-up to the website, as well as drawing up and providing an updated collection calendar to every household.
The existing rounds were out of date, having been last reviewed them in 2012. There are 5,000 more homes in South Kesteven today than when the rounds were previously mapped - and each of these homes has their own set of bins that need emptying.
Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of pounds buying extra vehicles, the decision was made to change collection days.