| Topic: | Re:Re:Labour's new £1 million garden tax | |
| Posted by: | Rosa Popham | |
| Date/Time: | 09/09/11 13:30:00 |
| It looks as though this administration thinks that if residents were prepared to pay for the ‘pink bags’ when they previously were in control of the council, then now we would not mind having to pay again for having our garden waste collected. What they have forgotten is that all recycling rates, and not just that for garden waste, went up considerably once the charge on the pink bags was scrapped by the Conservative administration as more and more people responded positively to our efforts to get more waste recycled and less waste put into the black bag. Reading the council report on this, Item 12 on the Cabinet agenda – page 2 – it is also stated that the administration is proposing spending £160K “for the purchase of plastic containment boxes”. Does this mean that they are intending to replace the large and efficient, easy to carry white sacks with plastic boxes, like the ones we now use for paper, glass, etc.? Would they come with a lid as to stop light plastic items flying away and litter our gardens/streets in windy condition? Finally, would these be big enough to accommodate large households’ need? Our sack, at the moment, gets filled to the brim on a weekly basis just like most of the others we see walking down our roads on collection day. There is no way that we would be able to fit everything into one box. This means that either most of us will need more than one container or, most likely, we will end up putting the majority of our plastic back into the black bags as there is a limit as to how many containers one can store. What would this do to the borough recycling rates and ultimately to us residents? What I fear is that if recycling rates drop, Labour will either re-coup the money that the council has to pay for the disposal of our general waste and/or associated fines through higher council rates or will start charging residents for the amount of waste in our black bags. |