The District Council is busy at the moment sorting out a new contract for waste collection and recycling. You can find the latest council reports here, although some of it is heavy going…
The choices it has to make are:
Unless they are totally out of touch with public opinion, all councillors know that having a fortnightly collection of the smelly stuff is going to be really unpopular…..
There’s also some interesting results of a survey the council carried out:
3 DOOR-TO-DOOR CANVASSING CAMPAIGN
3.1 The Council received funding from the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to undertake a canvassing campaign to encourage households to maximise the use of the local recycling services. This campaign was undertaken by Enventure Consultancy.3.2 Two recycling co-ordinators and seven recycling promoters were recruited from the local area to work over a period of eleven weeks, commencing in July. These individuals visited all properties and carried out surveys through a short conversation with residents and provided advice. The overall contact rate achieved by the campaign was 36%. Re-visits were carried out in a number of areas; contact rates in Barling Magna and Hawkwell were,
however, still very low.3.3 90% of residents claimed to use the kerbside recycling scheme. It became apparent, however, that some are not fully aware of the range of materials they can recycle in the blue box. In particular, most residents were unaware that they could recycle white page directories and clean foil.
3.4 Of the residents that claimed to use the kerbside recycling scheme, 91% claimed to recycle newspapers, 78% claimed to recycle food and drink cans, 82% claimed to recycle glass bottles and 85% claimed to recycle glass jars.
3.5 When asked ?What would make you recycle more?, 62% of residents responded that they would like to see a wider range of materials collected at the kerbside.
3.6 Overwhelmingly, residents would like to have the collection of plastic and cardboard included within the kerbside recycling scheme. In addition, a large number of residents would like the Council to provide a free green waste kerbside collection scheme….