‘HOW MUCH RECYCLABLE WASTE IS COUNCIL BURYING OR BURNING?’
Hundreds of homes without recycling bins
HUNDREDS of homes in Stoke-ontrent do not have recycling bins.
There are gaps in city recycling services from Trent Vale to Tunstall and Meir to Middleport, a Sentinel investigation has found.
The news comes as Stoke-on-trent City Council looks to slash its carbon footprint as part of a £4.3 million Government-funded scheme.
This will see solar panels installed on council buildings as part of plans to reduce emissions by 1,659 tons of
CO2 a year.
The council says every property should have some kind of recycling recepticle, but some blocks of flats are too difficult to access for collections to take place.
A council statement, issued in response to a Freedom of Information request, states: “Every property (house, bungalow, maisonette etc) either has a blue bin or a kerbside box for recycling.
“Approximately 19,000 have a recycling box collected every fortnight, and approximately 90,000 have a blue bin.
“Some blocks of flats have a large recycling container, others do not due to the difficulty in gaining access with the split bodied refuse freighters which are wider than the standard freighter used for domestic collections.
“We are unable to provide any detailed plans for future delivery of blue bins across the city as these are dependent on completion of any new building developments within an area.
“As you will appreciate, these can be delayed through Covid-19 and in addition, our own resources to deliver bins could be affected over the coming months.”
Labour’s shadow cabinet member for the environment, councillor Alastair Watson, left,said: “After five years in charge, the Conservatives in Stoke-on-trent preside over a system which prevents thousands of people from actively recycling. It is very disappointing.
“We can only presume that this means that tonnes of recyclable waste is being sent either to landfill or the incinerator – producing harmful CO2 emissions and undermining our collective efforts to tackle climate change.
“The council needs to come clean about how much recyclable waste they are burying or burning.
“It also means that thousands of residents are paying for a recycling service that they don’t get at a time when the Conservatives are – year on year – raising council tax.
“Why should some of our neighbours pay for a service they don’t get because the council can’t get its act together?”
Some of the addresses have been withheld in line with data protection and information act laws.