Better Recycling comes to Epsom - at Last!
February 3, 2009 10:03 AM
Recycling chaos should become a thing of the past
The council is expanding its doorstep collection of waste later this month after years of pressure from Liberal Democrats councillors. The first areas to benefit from collection of cardboard and plastic bottles are confirmed as Nonsuch, Stoneleigh, Ewell and parts of Town and College wards.
Collection of wheelie bins holding residual, non-recyclable material, will move to fortnightly at the same time. There may be a short delay in bringing the new service on-line after refuse vehicles catch up on their normal collections after the snow.
Households involved should receive an explanatory leaflet about containers and how to package food waste. They are also invited to put in requests for additional collection services, e.g. disposable nappies. Local councillors expect to receive a large number of complaints.
Epsom & Ewell's Liberal Democrat councillors, who supported the plan in principle, issued the following statement: "We know the new system is not going to find favour with some people, but as long as residents are diligent about recycling as much as possible, it can and it will work. People who have any kind of problem, don't quite understand the new arrangements, or find storage space difficult, are welcome to call us. We just cannot go on burying rubbish in the ground in this country and until we can get manufacturers to reduce packaging in the first place, we've no alternative but to try and recycle whatever we can."
Epsom's Lib Dem County Councillor Colin Taylor said "The next step is to sort out how the waste that cannot be recycled will be dealt with. Thankfully the Capel mass-burn incinerator has yet again been thrown out by the High Court. Landfill is fast running out, so until Surrey has an acceptable way of converting its residual waste into energy, money will have to be spent transporting it to other counties."
The Lib Dems hope that sites like the one shown in the photograph will become a thing of the past. They claim that local people are ahead of the council in recycling, hence recycling stations are overflowing much of the time.