Have your say on recycling
Residents have responded overwhelmingly to the Council’s current survey on rubbish and recycling. Over 1000 residents have given their opinions via refuse and recycling survey, with two weeks still left until the survey closes.
Reigate & Banstead Borough Council has signalled that it will be extending the recycling service in future, and is asking residents to give their views on how they would like to see the service improved.
Increase recycling rate
Cllr Julian Ellacott, Executive Member for Environment, said: "It’s great to see so many people getting involved in this important survey.
"It is the Council’s aim to increase recycling – although we are currently well above the national average, recycling over 40% of our waste, we cannot stand still.
"We want to hit a rate of 60% within the next 10 years, but the challenge for us is to do this without hurting Council tax payers.”
In 2007/08, 30,779 tonnes of waste from household wheelie bins in the Borough was collected and sent to landfill. Over 75% of this waste was, in fact, recyclable.
In addition, with increasing landfill tax, it will cost more to send waste to landfill than to recycle it, so we have to recycle more in order to keep the cost down
Food waste
The biggest component of landfilled waste in the Borough is food – a third of the average wheelie bin consists of wasted food, which creates methane gas when it decomposes in landfill sites.
In addition, European Union fines will penalise the throwing away of food waste from 2010 onwards, leading to potentially significant increases in Council tax, unless the amount of food waste is reduced.
Therefore the Council is consulting with residents to find out the best way to tackle issues like the recycling of food waste, as well as other recyclable materials.
Acceptable service
Through this consultation, the Council seeks to understand from residents how to achieve the most acceptable service for the majority of their needs, achieve more door to door recycling collection, significantly reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and how to improve service delivery.
You can complete the survey by visiting the refuse and recycling page. The consultation ends on Monday 15 September.
Reigate & Banstead Borough Council
Town Hall
Castlefield Road
Reigate
RH2 0SH
01737 276000
customer.services@reigate-banstead.gov.uk
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