letter to the Standard, 5/1/10

[susanreads]

Standard, Letters page.

Waste Options consultation

Dear Editor,

The deadline for the Waste Options Chrismas Consultation responses is Friday 15th January. I was one of those who didn't receive the recent Colchester Courier with the waste 'consultation' in so I had to collect one at the Town Hall. After all the fuss about choosing one of the four unsatisfactory options it failed to include any tick boxes for the options.

Instead they asked us to tick boxes on a separate list of questions - do we support reducing waste to landfill, increasing recycling, enforcing recycling, having 'a weekly food collection service' and 'fortnightly collections of your remaining waste'? No questions about costly wheelie bins, which usually accompany alternate week collections, or about collecting recyclables separately.

However, they ask people to send any comments or ideas to FREEPOST NAT4433, Colchester CO1 1BR by 15th January or online at www.colchester.gov.uk/recycling. Could I ask people to reject the four proposed woolly and unspecific options and support 'Option E', the alternative fifth option we proposed before Christmas? In brief it asks for:

1. Weekly separated collections of everything to make it easy for people, sorted at the kerb.


2. Enough kerbside boxes and re-usable bags to put the separated materials in.


3. Weekly separate foodwaste bucket collection to go to an Anaerobic Digestion plant to make electricity or gas for home heating.


4. Proper collections of all recyclable materials separately, including paper, card, plastic bottles, mixed plastics, rags, cans and glass colours, sorted at the kerb to maximise quality for our UK reprocessors, bring high income and save huge amounts of energy.


5. Use suitable vehicles to collect the separated materials, including the flatback vehicles which separate the glass colours.


6. No wheelie bins.

Our current notorious leased 'split' vehicles cannot cope with separated recyclables. The one-use plastic sacks brought in by the Conservatives cost £120,000 for one year. They mix paper with card and plastic bottles with mixed plastics, which then cost to be sorted out at Canvey Island. The LibDems and Independents said we should have trialled re-usable boxes and bags instead.

Government-funded WRAP reports show that it is cheaper to sort materials at the kerb and to bale them locally for quality materials and top prices. A Colchester council report last February showed extremely low prices received for the mixed glass and sacks of recyclables which have to be sorted out. Chelmsford council separates recyclables at the kerb and received £1.5million last year.

Yours sincerely,

Paula Whitney,
Co-ordinator, Colchester Friends of the Earth,
4 Shears Crescent,
West Mersea, Essex, CO5 8AR.