Conservatives announce plans to introduce weekly food
waste collections
22 October 2007
Conservatives on South Gloucestershire Council have announced their plans to introduce weekly food waste collections.
Conservatives on South Gloucestershire Council have announced their plans to introduce weekly food waste collections, with the scheme aimed to be phased in from the end of next year. Under their proposals, residents will be able to put food waste in the green bin, and the bin will be collected weekly instead of fortnightly. The black bin will continue to be collected fortnightly. As well as meeting residents’ calls for a weekly collection, their plans are predicted to divert at least 13,500 tonnes a year from landfill and increase the Councils recycling rates from 38.85% to 48.35%. This plan is the centrepiece of the Conservatives waste strategy which aims to achieve household waste recycling levels of 50%.
Cllr. Heather Goddard (Conservative Cabinet Member for Communities) comments,
“We are delighted to announce we are planning to deliver on our election promise to introduce weekly food waste collections. This is an enormously popular policy with our residents and will enable us to provide not just a weekly green bin collection but the equivalent of one and half collections a week. This will address the concerns raised by residents about having food in bins for potentially two weeks under the current system.”
“We are awaiting the opening of a new facility late next year which will enable us to take food waste in the green bin and once this is operation we will be able to introduce the new weekly collection, hopefully from the end of next year.”
“This new improved service will also stop at least 13,500 tonnes of waste going into expensive landfill which is great news, both for the environment and the Council Tax payer by avoiding expensive landfill tax. Introducing weekly food waste collections will also drive up our recycling performance and propel us well on our way to our 50% household waste recycling target.”
“We believe this will be a major contribution to achieving our three aims of providing better services for our residents, being a financially good deal for Council Tax payers and making our a real local contribution to the global environmental challenge.”
“Whilst this is our flagship waste policy we will be unveiling other plans to further improve our recycling rates and make it easier for residents to recycle.”
The Conservatives have already approved the introduction of another four plastic recycling bank sites and five new TetraPak recycling banks sites.