Who exactly is responsible for the way in which so much rubbish is created?
Supermarkets should lead the way in cutting plastic waste
What happens to the District Council’s plastic waste…?
It seems, however, that it is badly behaved residents who could do better – according to the waste manager at the county council:
More than 40% of Devon “rubbish” could be recycled
She said that the recent findings showed that across the county, 40.8% of the contents put into the residual bins were recyclable. This is the equivalent of 56,000 tonnes of materials and if all Devon householders recycled all of this material, the recycling rate would rise to 71%, rather than the current 54%…
The meeting also highlighted key aspects of the Government Resources and Waste Strategy published in December 2018 and the four subsequent consultations.
The consultation on Consistency in Household and Business Recycling Collections in England hopes to introduce a core set of dry recyclables from the kerbside for all councils, which could include a separate weekly food waste collection, a free garden waste collection, standardised bin colours and sizes and residual waste collections to take place at least fortnightly.
But councils across Devon have already raised concerns about the implications of introduction of consistent collections across the entire country.
East Devon District Council currently collects residual, non-recyclable waste, once every three weeks and recycling rates have risen more than 10% since making the change in 2017, and when discussed by their cabinet earlier this month, councillors said the proposals that could force them to collect residual waste fortnightly again were a nonsense and would have significant cost implications…