New rubbish collection service in Warwick district has led to increase in recycled rubbish, latest figures show

Councillors across Warwick and Stratford districts should be ‘singing from the rooftops’ after figures showed the combined new 123+ waste collection service had led to a big increase in recycled rubbish and the amount of food waste collected.

Head of environmental services Julie Lewis said the numbers showed that residents were changing their habits resulting in less rubbish going to landfill and that worries over fly-tipping had been unfounded.

Speaking at this week’s meeting of Stratford District Council’s overview and scrutiny committee, she explained: “It was said that we would have much more fly-tipping when we started charging for garden waste or now that we have gone three-weekly but actually, in August we had a reduction of 20 fly-tips from the year before and in September it was one less. We have not seen fly-tipping rising and it is not an issue.”

She went on to explain that there had been a significant reduction in the amount of rubbish going to landfill with six per cent more being recycled in September compared to last year.

Ms Lewis added: “Packaging and parcels are also getting lighter so to show that we have more tonnage going to recycling is such a huge success story and that was what this was all about. People are changing their habits. We should be singing from the rooftops because that is a huge good news story.”

Members of the committee were told that there had been issues, particularly with certain parts of the district and with the number of missed collections.

She said: “It became apparent that Thursdays and Fridays, particularly in the Southam wards, were particularly heavy for Biffa. This is what we pay Biffa for, they have gone away and made some adjustments to rebalance those days and weeks.

“Missed collections do happen, we are not robots, we are human. We are also dealing with the general public who might not have got their bin out when they said or presented it in the right place.

“But there has been a significant reduction. Food waste will always be one of our biggest issues because they are little bins and quite easy to miss - hidden behind another bin or a car tyre.”

The new service collects 287,000 bins from 135,000 households across both districts each week and the amount of food waste collected has gone up from 88 tonnes per week to more than 200 tonnes after three weeks.