Refuse Collections

The council claims to provide a "green bin" recycling service, but this is not working properly in Kirkstall. Green bins are intended for clean paper, cardboard, "tin" cans and plastic bottles and should be collected monthly, separately from the weekly black bin waste collection. In some areas the council has not provided bins, in others it fails to empty them. There have been repeated, ongoing complaints from residents over an extended period that having laboriously separated their recyclable waste into green bins, the council has emptied both the green and the black bins into the same collection vehicle, and taken all the materials to landfill. This has undermined public confidence in the collection service.

All three Kirkstall councillors have actively pursued this issue, and council staff have repeatedly apologised for these errors, but it has proved extemely difficult to stop. A minority of residents contaminate their green bins with non-recyclable materials, and the waste collection service appears to have no effective system for dealing with this.

Last updated 29 November 2008 at 19:55. Back to the top