Recycling Issues

We get a massive amount of wrong-things-in-wrong-bins on this site and the council often refuse to empty them. The knock on effect is there's even less capacity for the next week.

The council wanted to try and understand why this is happening so myself, the office and resident Joy (who works at the council and often helps us out), met with the recycling team yesterday to try and see if there are any solutions to ongoing problems.

We didn't want to make excuses, but we tried to offer reasons why this might happen. We explained that we're an older demographic and some residents physically struggle to use the recycle bins. They can't break cardboard boxes down, they get their hands trapped trying to push their plastics and cans into the hole, etc.

But the recycling team said they use these same bins across all of Basildon's care homes and retirement housing complexes and they don't get the level of issues we have here. So, whilst they're sympathetic with people who struggle, they feel that on the most part, it's laziness and whatever system they put in place, there are a hardcore of people who will not recycle.

Unfortunately, that does seem to be the case. The council looked at a sample of bins yesterday and every single one had cross-contamination. For example, lots of cardboard beer cases and empty beer cans all just chucked in the non-recycling bin near Dunton View.

The council did accept that the plastic/tins bins might be a problem for those with dexterity issues so as a trial they're going to leave them unlocked. They also agreed that the top of the park needs more capacity so some of the unused bins on back-Orchard will be relocated. They also agreed to provide more bins if we're still short, but Joy has always helped with this anyway so we only have to ask her.

However, there's little to stop people who are determined not to recycle.

The council offered to have a recycling roadshow on site to educate people. But we've done all this in our newsletters and even offered to help people if they have issues - but the problems still occur. All we can do is try to appeal to people's better nature and once again remind everyone that throwing everything in the non-recycle bin affects us all.