At the Full Council meeting on 15th January all Liberal Democrats supported a motion to retain weekly recycling. The motion is reproduced in full below, it asks for more time to investigate further options enabling the required savings to be made whilst keeping weekly recycling.  However, Conservative Councillor Richard Hudson moved an amendment that dismissed our motion and put that the existing decision to move to fortnightly recycling be upheld. All but one Tory (Mary Clark, Councillor for Old Malden ward, abstained) and both Labour Councillors voted this through.  The full details of the proposed new scheme are shown here.

At the same meeting Councillor Hilary Gander, Surbiton Hill ward councillor and opposition spokesperson for Environment and Transport, handed in our petition of over 1,000 signatures, calling on Kingston Council to keep all recycling weekly.  This was ignored by the Conservative administration.

It is very disappointing that the Conservatives and Labour did not support our motion.  I raised the point that if a resident doesn’t feel able to store all of their glass, plastics and tins for 2 weeks, they may resort to just throwing it in with the landfill waste. It seems to fall on deaf ears.  I’m also concerned that there was no consultation on this change – telephone market research is not the same – and there will be no trial.

says Cllr Diane White

Council 15 January 2015 – Liberal Democrat Motion

Re-commissioning of the Council’s Recycling and Landfill Collection Service

This Council notes:

• the vast majority of residents recycle and their efforts successfully resulted in RBK being the 4th highest London borough for recycling rates;
• at least nine in ten of the residents taking part in the recent waste and recycling research (to look at changes to the collection service) are recycling cardboard, plastic bottles, tins and cans, paper, glass bottles, glass jars, juice cartons, plastic containers, pots or trays;
• the research indicated extra communication with our residents is needed to reduce further the amount of recyclables such as batteries, foil, aerosols and clothes/shoes/textiles that are currently put into the landfill bin;
• overall, respondents were generally unsupportive of the proposed changes to the recycling collection that would see recyclables collected fortnightly; and
• residents reported concerns about the build-up of recyclables and the storage required over a two week period, potential hygiene aspects and a perceived decrease in the quality of the service.

This Council believes:

• the levels of recycling currently achieved is down to the collection service being weekly; and
• a fortnightly two stream collection service of popular recyclables (with different arrangements in the first and second weeks of a fortnight) and the loss of other recyclables is a backward step.

This Council resolves:

• to instructs officers to use the previously negotiated two year extension to the contract, to ensure the best service option;
• to urgently set up a cross party working group to discuss options that so far have not been included, with the clear statement that all recycling collections must remain weekly; and
• any decision made on the contract is the subject of full public consultation and a suitable trial.