Council considers changes to recycling service

9:32am Saturday 5th July 2008

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A proposal to alter the borough's waste and recycling collection service has been described as "rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic".

Richmond Council's cabinet will consider a plan to change the waste and recycling service eight months after it was introduced in an effort to cut costs and improve reliability and cleanliness.

�It sounds like they are rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. I don�t see this as a great advance, it sounds like they are swapping a bag for a box."

Tom Stewart

On Monday, July 7, the borough executive is recommended to approve a simplification to household collections which would come into force in November, a year after the current scheme - with plastic and cardboard collected from doorsteps and each area collected on its own day - was introduced.

The new scheme would see residents receiving a new blue box to be used for paper and flattened cardboard.

The existing black box will be used for all glass bottles, cans, plastic bottles and foil which will be collected and compressed in the same vehicle to be later separated at a sorting facility.

Currently residents have a blue bag for paper recycling and a white bag which, along with the black box, can be used for cardboard, plastic bottles and cans.

The council has admitted the current regime has been relatively expensive and caused confusion, but said the changes will allow more to be collected as recycling rates continue to increase - they have jumped by more than a third to over 40 per cent since November.

Tom Stewart, a Hampton resident who last month said the council was "miserably failing" and left some borough streets looking like a "third world village", said he did not know what the changes would achieve.

"It sounds like they are rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic," he said. "I don't see this as a great advance, it sounds like they are swapping a bag for a box.

"I'm not impressed, and I will be even less impressed if, having done this change, they still don't collect it."

Councillor Martin Seymour, Richmond Conservatives' environment spokesman, said it was a saga of council incompetence, which had cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.

However, Councillor Martin Elengorn, Richmond Council cabinet member for environment, said the council felt the time was right to bring forward a further change that will make the service more cost-effective and simpler for residents.

He said residents would be contacted to make sure they understood the changes and collection days would not alter.

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