Council and democracy
The future of waste collections
This consultation is now closed.
Thank you to everyone who completed our online questionnaire during this consultation. We received nearly 2,000 replies – a great response.
As well as a questionnaire, we also ran a series of waste focus groups in the towns and villages.
Background information to the consultation
A typical family in South Oxfordshire produces nearly one tonne of rubbish every year and as a district we produce over 50,000 tonnes of rubbish a year.
We all need to make a greater effort to reduce, reuse and recycle. We cannot continue sending this much rubbish to landfill - not only is it bad for the environment because it emits greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming but space for landfill is rapidly running out.
Landfill is going to cost us all
It will cost us all financially if we don’t stop sending so much rubbish to landfill and if we don’t increase the amount we recycle. By law we now have to meet tough new targets set by the Government. We face fines of £150 for every tonne over our landfill limit. This is all money that will eventually come out of your pocket as a taxpayer.
In Oxfordshire, we have to reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill by 25 per cent by the year 2009/10 and 50 per cent by 2012/13.
What are we going to do about it?
We are letting a new rubbish and recycling contract starting in April 2009 – this is a big opportunity for us to improve our services, increase recycling and reduce waste going to landfill.
This is what we are currently thinking:
Food waste collections
We think it makes sense to collect food waste separately from other waste and then compost it. By doing this, we can reduce the amount of rubbish we send to landfill by up to 5,000 tonnes a year. That’s a big environmental benefit. If we decide to collect food waste separately, we will give every household a container to put it in and collect it weekly.
Food waste includes:
- fruit and vegetables
- vegetable and fruit peelings
- cooked and uncooked food
- plate scrapings (scraps)
- meat and fish (including bones)
- egg shells
- dairy products (for example cheese and yoghurt)
- tea bags and coffee grounds
Recycling
At present, we provide a weekly recycling collection in a green box or clear sacks. An alternative would be for us to provide a larger wheeled bin, big enough to allow recycling collections to move from weekly to fortnightly. This would cost less and a wheeled bin has the advantage of having a lid, reducing the risk of material blowing around and littering the streets. You told us that litter from the recycling boxes can be a problem in our Household Waste Survey carried out in February 2007.
Glass recycling
At present, we don’t collect glass from the kerbside but we could start doing this in the future. We think that we can stop about 1,000 tonnes of glass going to landfill by offering a kerbside collection rather than expecting you to go to a bottle bank.
Garden waste collection
Our fortnightly garden waste collection service has proved extremely popular with residents and we don’t have any proposals to change it. We now have nearly 13,000 residents signed up to the service. All garden waste is composted locally, and used to improve farmland.
Residual rubbish collection
Once we’ve asked you to separate out everything that we can recycle or compost, you will still have some rubbish left that will have to go to landfill. We need to decide how often we are going to collect this rubbish and in what sort of container. Evidence from other parts of the country is that if the council only collects this residual waste once a fortnight then people recycle and compost more, which is what we want. By collecting food waste weekly, instead of every fortnight as some council’s have done, we think concerns about smells and litter can be addressed.
Waste consultation
By now, you've probably got some quite strong views for or against what we are proposing. So, please let us know what they are. It is very important that we listen to your views before we make any decisions.
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