Berrylands trial halves landfill waste

Fortnightly collections set for whole borough.

In the eight months preceding the trial, households in the Berrylands area produced 624 tonnes of landfill waste, but in the eight months since, the amount of landfill waste was just 354 tonnes.

A new waste collection contract for Kingston is due to start in September next year. A council spokesman said: "The results in terms of cutting landfill waste have been incredible and the new waste contract will be similar, but not identical, to the Berrylands scheme.

"Berrylands was a trial. We've listened very carefully to feedback from households involved. We know there are problems and we will be introducing changes."

The alterations will include providing biodegradable corn starch liners for kitchen waste bins and giving out larger wheelie bins for non-recyclable waste.

A Special Neighbourhood Committee Meeting to discuss the results of a recent consultation and to look at the recycling and refuse collection options available to the council is to take place on Wednesday 21 November.

Comments

Yeah - but I wonder how many people have been making extra trips to the tip. Have they included that in there analysis I wonder.

Yep, just fyi, they did ask that in the lengthy questionnaire they gave to all Berrylands residents.

I'd agree with the report's findings that people are generally more in favour of the scheme than against it.

Undoubtedly, there was initial scepticism / fear of the unknown and also a few initial teething problems, but in the main the problems have been ironed out.

For example, households with kids in nappies now get the bigger bin automatically, as the smaller bins were getting filled with disposable nappies alone every fortnight.

The free bin liners for food wate is a good idea as the recommended newspaper lining would just stick to the inside after emptying, making it a fair bit harder to clean out.

The provision of a limited number of bin bags for occasions when you can't get all non-recyclable waste into the bin is also welcome.
I found that bbq's / birthdays led to us having to hold over non-recyclable waste for another fortnight. This should now be resolved.

On the whole, a thumbs up to the scheme.
Its clear that recycling rates have gone up - all my neighbours now leave their recycling containers out, whereas only about two thirds did before.

Imo, the key to the success of the scheme is the weekly food collection - as long as we continue to get that, I think most people are happy.

Of course, these simple little truths won't stop local conservatives / daily mail readers (do they differ?) from trying to scaremonger and make cheap political capital. Don't believe the orchestrated negative hype in the local papers, life under the big bad new bin regime isn't that different really.

Interesting. I live on Berrylands Road - surbiton end, so not sure if that is classed as Berrylands or not. What I do know is that the rubbish has only be picked up fortnighjtly, and we do not get bags for nappies (I have two small children) - and we don't have bins from the council, we buy all our own black bags. The result is 2 weeks full of black bin bags in my garden full of nappies, and my trips to the tip.

We also haven't had a weekly food collection. So I guess we fall into the teething problem category.

ps: we recyle into the green boxes always, and don't buy the mail.

The way I see it is, if you don't have the special bins you're not on the trial.

You should be getting a weekly collection and need to complain to the council that the bin men aren't doing their job!!

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