Jenny Talbot (Collections, January 16) suggested that saving £600,000 a year (£4.2m over seven years) by changing rubbish collection schedules is a “no-brainer”.
But it defies logic that money can be saved by collecting a fortnight’s worth of tins and bottles one week, and a fortnight’s worth of paper the following week.
You still need to send a crew and a bin lorry out every week, but they will only collect two-thirds of the recycling you have accumulated.
And, inevitably, people will occasionally get confused over which week it is, and put the wrong lot out – not a problem with the landfill bins, as they stay out all the time anyway.
If you look at the council’s own explanation, the main part of the saving of £4.2m will actually come from the new waterproof bins for recycling paper, which will reduce the processing costs of recycling as it will not need drying, which is an expensive process.
This is a quite separate issue from the collection schedule.
TIM LIDBETTER
Kingston
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