“Don’t throw your money away” – that’s the message of Thurrock Council’s environment portfolio holder, Cllr Gerard Rice this week.
Speaking on Monday (29 June), he said: “It costs the council tax payers of Thurrock hundreds of thousands of pounds a year because people are just not recycling properly.
“The situation is so bad that we are now having to take drastic action after nearly a quarter of all recycling loads are being rejected because they’re contaminated by non-recyclable materials.
“People might remember that we had to ban recycling plastic bags some years ago simply because others were ‘hiding’ chicken carcasses and other food waste inside them. Well the situation has got worse.”
Although the price of recycled materials has fallen dramatically over recent years, it is still considerably cheaper for the council to process recycling than to pay for residual waste disposal – either landfill or waste-to-energy.
Thurrock pays around £15 a tonne for all the blue bin collections, but well over £100 a tonne at the moment for residual waste. That’s coming down later in the year, but only to £95.
Cllr Rice said: “Unfortunately one blue bin with the wrong materials in it can lead to a whole lorry-load – four tonnes worth – being rejected.
“On one day last month, four out of seven loads were rejected and each of those costs us £120 instead of £15.
“Effectively it means one thoughtless person’s actions is putting part of everyone’s council tax payment in the bin – and it’s happening too often.”
He added: “We have announced we’ve found some money to reinvest in our street cleaning and grass cutting services, but we’re losing far more than that by thoughtless recycling.
“Everyone makes a mistake once in a while, but that’s not the issue here. The amount of rejected loads is literally costing the council tax payers of Thurrock hundreds of thousands of pounds.
“We are currently placing stickers on the bins saying what they can and cannot take and we are not collecting any blue bins that we can see are contaminated.
“From next month we will be using tags on the bins and after three – each followed up by a personal visit – the blue bin will be removed.”
There will be a slight change in wheeled bin collections from today (30 June) until 31 August with collections beginning at 6am instead of 7am. This is so that crews are not working at midday in high summer temperatures. Residents are asked to make sure they do not miss the earlier collection time.
thurrock.gov.uk/waste
