Dear Editor,
Cheshire East has (until now) offered simple, quality waste disposal.
Some councils require items to be separated across multiple boxes and the correct one to be carried to the roadside on a six-week rotating cycle.
The Cheshire East ‘all in one’ grey bin system removed much faff and made it as easy as possible to recycle.
The garden bin system sees waste turned into compost by a contractor.
This produces much less greenhouse gas at a cheaper price compared to black bin landfill.
With such simplicity and logic involved it is no surprise that Cheshire East were recently ranked as the 22nd most efficient local authority in England (from 338) on household recycling.
The 57.5% efficiency rate was the second highest north of Watford.
Come January 2024 Cheshire East will introduce charges for garden waste collection.
The most expensive council is Harlow (£96) and the cheapest is Richmondshire (£22), they rank 181st and 210th respectively with Richmondshire recycling a meagre 39% of all household waste.
Irrespective of cost, it is obvious that putting any extra hurdles between the public and recycling will only result in recycling losing out.
Councillors’ excuses for introducing charges generally start with budgetary issues, but that doesn’t explain why we will have the highest charges in the North West (£56).
Some cllrs say ‘other councils do it, so should we’ but I am yet to discover which councillor actually came up with this idea.
We know that Labour and the Independents support it but none have personally taken credit for creating this policy which, in a democracy, leaves me wondering just exactly whom is jepordising our recycling progress so far?
Yours
Allen Gage
Cllr, Willaston and Rope
Cheshire East Council
President: Crewe and Nantwich Conservative Association
Doesn’t bode well, when you are having to pay £56 to become ‘green’. More fly tipping will occur.
Wont the council tax for all the thousands of new houses that have been built in Nantwich and surrounding areas pay for this? Or is all the money being spent on digging up the road for gas/broadband or making roundabouts everywhere. People will just hide the green waste under the grey or black bins or put it in black bin bags and so as the article says, recycling will loose out.
As I have said before, don’t pay this extra bill that has been covered by your council tax for years,just place all your garden waste in the black bin.
Such a shame that our greedy inefficient council are setting back our green recycling years,just for a quick easy buck.
Don’t get taken in ,it will be 56 pounds next year then 60 and so on.
Relatives in Cornwall tell me their Council is introducing a similar system to that used at present by CEC. CEC say they are strapped for cash.
Perhaps an idea might be for CEC to contact Cornwall Council to see if they would like to buy CEC’s soon to be redundant equipment?
It will just go in the black bin underneath some bin bags. It must be impossible timewise to check each one.
pointless idea given the end result will be fly tipping which would cost even more