Concern over bin collection
Residents angry over uplift row
Residents of a West Lothian hamlet are being taken to task over their recycling habits by picky bin men.
But those who stay in Hillhead - close to the Falkirk boundary - claim they are going too far.
One resident, Allison Young, says she has been refused an uplift several times while her neighbours have also found their bins full after the waste collectors have left. Mrs Young even claimed that the bin men refused to empty her blue bin because it had three teabags in it a few weeks ago. And this week, her blue bin has gone unemptied because it had a small piece of polystyrene in it.
She said: “A few weeks ago there were three teabags on the top of the rubbish pile in the bin. My husband said he’d take them away but the bin men still refused to take the bin.
They said ‘there’ll be more in there’. I emptied the whole bin to see what was in the bin and I found one more little teabag when the bin men had left. I’m sure it wouldn’t have shut the whole recycling plant down. This week I have a wee bit of polystyrene on top of the pile. They refused to take the bin again. We don’t hide things in our bin but I’m sure there are people who do. What do they do about them? The daft thing is, if I complain enough they’ll send the lorry back out and pick it up anyway. What a waste of money and time.”
West Lothian Council say incorrect recycling costs taxpayers £ 1.65 million every year, with £ 500,000 being used to take contaminated waste to landfill.
A council spokeswoman said: “Despite blue recycling bins being available in West Lothian for more than a decade, a few households do not understand the importance of correctly separating their waste. Putting anything which is wet or dirty in the blue bin is then compressed and spreads through the load with the result that the entire load can be rejected by the recycling facility. The council has provided households with food caddies for food waste, including teabags, and polystyrene is not accepted by the recycling facility. If a blue bin is identified as being contaminated then its contents will go to landfill as the cost to sending one bin to landfill is substantially less than contaminating a lorry.”