Council cannot cope with red box demand

Jo Cave

02 May 2008

THE COUNCIL has given up on delivering red boxes and bags to thousands of households.
Recycling rates remain high as most residents get to grips with the new waste collections, but Warwick District Council has been left red-faced by their failure to anticipate the level of demand for extra containers.
The newly-enlarged Sort It team has been forced to lay on more events for people to pick up their boxes themselves. Already 12,500 boxes have been collected by householders personally.
District council spokesman Richard Brooker said: "We are no longer able to deliver red recycling boxes and bags to individual customer homes. We simply do not have the resources. Everyone with a placed order has been contacted, informed of this, and asked to attend one of the special collection sessions. If there are genuine reasons why a customer is unable to attend we will endeavour to help out.
"We again apologise to customers who are still experiencing problems with the collection of their waste and recycling. We are working hard, together with our contractors SITA UK, to resolve matters as quickly and effectively as we can."
Residents' astonishing recycling efforts now means 80 per cent of rubbish can be recycled but the sheer mass of recyclables that needs sorting through is causing the council another headache.
It is now asking that people sort their papers, plastics, glass and metals into separate containers themselves to make life easier for collection crews.
Mr Brooker added: "This is a fantastic effort by local residents, for which we are most grateful. It is however creating considerably more work for the contractors than had been anticipated at this relatively early stage in the new scheme. Additional vehicles and extended crew hours are being deployed to assist.
"We are asking householders, where possible, to help us to help them by sorting their recycling as much as possible."
Red boxes can be collected from Riverside House next Tuesday and Thursday (May 6 and 8) from 5.30pm to 7.30pm and from Abbey End in Kenilworth on Saturday (May 10) from 10am to 2pm.

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