Birmingham's bins boss has defended the service amid a performance slump saying the council collects 250 hippopotamuses worth of waste every day.
Cllr Majid Mahmood, cabinet member for clean streets and waste, admitted that missed collections had increased since controversial changes, which came about as a result of the bin strike resolution , were implemented on September 24.
But in a lengthy blog post he said the council had now reached a 'significant milestone' and vowed that performance was improving.
The service has been heavily criticised by workers and councillors in the last month.
While last week the Resources committee was told the service was facing a £5.5m black hole this year, in part due to a six-month delay costing £1.8m in implementing the service changes agreed between the council and unions.
It prompted Cllr Paul Tilsley (Lib Dem, Sheldon) to describe the department as an 'absolute mess'.
But Cllr Mahmood (Lab, Bromford and Hodge Hill) said as of this week all staff and depots have moved to the new five-day working model from the previous structure which ran over four days with longer shifts.
The new waste and recycling collection officers have also assumed their duties whilst the crews have been equipped with new devices.
Cllr Mahmood said disruption in recent weeks was partly down to staff getting used to their new routes adding: "As a result of the roll-out, our collection rate has dropped slightly from the 99.86 per cent we achieve during business as usual (inevitable issues such as vehicle reliability and blocked access to streets are factors which mean councils up and down the land do not hit 100 per cent) – but we are getting back up to the rate we had before the changes came in.
"And I want to make it clear that we are committed to this new operating model and making it work - but it is really important to understand the scale of this transformation and modernisation."
He went to reel off a number of statistics in defence of the service saying the council collects waste from 360,000 properties every week - double the amount of other major cities like Manchester and Bristol.
Cllr Mahmood also pointed out the 70,000 homes served every fortnight during garden waste season and the 18,000 properties still on sack collections.
He said: "On a typical day we collect 1,000 tonnes of waste. A quick Google suggests this is equivalent to the weight of 250 hippopotamuses or in ten days of collecting, we pick up waste that weighs as much as the Eiffel Tower.
"The figures are staggering. No other council has a service on the size and scale we do."
The new working model is set to be reviewed after three months - late-December - but the bins boss vowed not to wait until then to make improvements and reassured that mop-up crews were on hand to collect some of the missed bins.
