It’s just rubbish

11:52am Friday 6th June 2008

RUBBISH collection in this country is becoming a mess. Almost every local authority has different ways of gathering it and, worryingly, more and more are switching to fortnightly collections.

The recycling imperative, which most reasonable people would happily sign up to, is producing the most bizarre anomalies. Some authorities don't collect plastics, some do and others only collect clear plastics.

Some authorities collect green waste, others don't and instead expect residents to stick it in their cars and drive up to 20 miles to dispose of it.

Then there are the bins of different shapes and sizes with different purposes, emptied on different weeks.

In the Wear Valley, the council has purchased thousands of wheelie bins and, because of a political impasse, is now storing them at further cost to the public purse while the matter is sorted. In Richmondshire, critics of wheelie bins say they are impractical for isolated farms and an eyesore to boot.

The fortnightly collection - in place in Hambleton for more than a year - has been the most controversial change because of public health fears.

Those fears will not have been soothed this week with the news that a Governmentcommissioned report carried out by the Central Science Laboratory, suggesting that the risks increased with less frequent collections, was kept under wraps.

During the introduction of all these changes, council taxes have been rising, almost universally, in excess of inflation.

Some authorities have threatened residents who don't conform to the new rules. It is little wonder that people are fed up.

The danger is that many people's willingness to recycle will be weakened by this strange mix of arrangements and the perception that some local councils are not being fair. There should be a common approach with variations permitted only between urban and rural areas. If people become very disenchanted there is a risk that fly tipping, particularly in rural areas, will increase - an unpleasant prospect.