Ashfield District council has voted in favour of replacing their current Black Bin (General waste) with a smaller bin. They will supplement this by giving a free garden waste bin for a 2 year period.

The reason given for this is to increase the amount of waste that is recycled, and to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill. All councils in the UK have to meet an european union target of 50% by 2020, currently only around 35% is currently recycled.

99% of people in the Ashfield district fully support recycling and do all they can to recycle as much as possible, however as the general waste bin is only emptied one every 2 weeks most families completely fill it even though they also fill their recycle bin.

They is no evidence been given that ADC has considered alternative methods to increase recycling, and there has been little or no public consultation before the council voted in favour of it.

Residents have a real fear of increased fly tipping due to bins being full and residents having nowhere to discard their waste other than in the streets etc. Residents could instead take extra waste to the recycling centres (The Tip) however that wouldn't reduce the amount of waste going to landfill but would increase air pollution from additional trips taken in the car/van etc.

To make matters even worse, it is expected that up to 70% of the current black bins (That would be replaced with smaller ones) would end up being sent to LANDFILL as they are not recyclable.

PLEASE ADC rethink your plans and involve the residents that you are there to represent. Give us a proper consultation, and lets hear all of the options before you introduce something very unpopular, which seems likely to fail, and which will harm the councils reputation (even further)