| REPORT BACKS LIB DEM PLANS FOR MORE INFO ON WASTE |
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February 2006
A new Council report has recommended a formal strategy for communicating about waste collection and recycling in Merton. This was one of the points highlighted by Merton Liberal Democrats in their evidence to the scrutiny panel compiling the report.
Local Liberal Democrat Anthony Fairclough said: "The Council needs to set out clearer plans about waste and recycling. Increased understanding of plans and targets amongst the public will improve the whole system's accountability. The public need to know how successful the Council is in this area - especially considering the financial costs of failing to reduce landfill.
"We were disappointed that the report didn't also make detailed plans for increasing plastics recycling, nor extra measures to protect the built environment, like street cleaning and more regular street sweeping, which we called for."
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For Scrutiny Review of Waste Collection Report, please click: here
Evidence given by Merton Liberal Democrats to the Regeneration and Public Realm Overview Scrutiny Panel
1. Clear plans: We feel that not enough is done to explain to the public the Council's plans and achievements in relation to the collection of waste and recycling.
For example, we feel that more needs to be done to explain the Council's strategy to meet statutory performance targets to recycle and / or compost 27% of household waste by 2006 (which is the statutory requirement according to the Draft Recycling Plan (July 2002) on the Council's website - which is the most up-to-date document we can find there; 27% is also the target outlined for 2005-2006 in Merton's draft Community Plan). According to Merton Council's website "over 20% of the [household] waste that we collect is recycled, (Figures 2004-2005)" - see http://www.merton.gov.uk/recycling/landfill.htm
So, if in 2004-2005 only 20% of household waste was recycled, how is (and was) that going to be increased to 27% by 2006? What was the Council's plan to increase household recycling 7% in one year, when the aim is only to increase it by further 6% in the next ten years (the draft Community Plan aims for 33% by 2015)? What is the current household recycling rate? We feel the Council needs to do more to explain its recycling targets to residents and to regularly and clearly set down the extent to which it is meeting them (or not, as the case may be). 2. Plastics recycling: We feel that in order to meet statutory recycling requirements, more recycling of plastics may need to be done, or else the Council needs to better explain why this is not possible. Please note that we feel that recycling in Merton has drastically improved with the introduction of the purple box scheme - however, that's not to say that there can't be further improvement. We understand that the contract for the collection of plastics, tin and card only allows the recycling of the two main types of plastic (and no mixed plastics). This means that the only plastics that can be collected as part of the purple box scheme are plastic bottles. When contacted, the Council's Environment and Regeneration Department explained that they are "governed with what we collect by what reprocessing companies will take and what they can make use of". However, Ealing Borough Council maintains collection points for mixed plastics, so there are obviously organisations that will recycle them. Given the statutory requirements to increase recycling, we wonder if this needs to be looked into in greater detail to see if Merton's recycling could be increased? 3. Street cleaning: The streets in Merton's town centres are swept regularly. However, although they may be largely free of litter, they are filthy. We submit that there needs to be more actual cleaning of streets. Examples of areas that are just constantly unclean can be provided on request. 4. Litter collection: We would argue that streets bordering town centre areas need to be swept more than just once a week.
Merton's town centres, as explained above, are swept regularly. We understand that all other streets are swept on the day following refuse collection. However, those streets that border Merton's town centres also accumulate litter at the weekends, dropped by individuals moving to and from the town centres - we feel that they also need to be swept some time over the weekend in addition to their normal weekly sweep. This would cut down on the accumulation of waste in those areas, which currently lies around until after the weekly refuse collection.
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