Garden Waste Service is Scrapped
Survey shows many residents wanted to keep service and improve it
The borough's garden waste collection service has been scrapped, despite a recent consultation which showed many respondents wanted it to continue and suggested ideas to improve it.
43% of those who took part in the online element of the survey explicitly said they wanted to continue with the current registration scheme and only 15% said they wanted the service to stop. 9% of people said they wanted a bookable, chargeable service, while 31% had other ideas for how garden waste should be dealt with - the vast majority suggesting adaptations to the current scheme but not getting rid of it.
In the consultation, the Council had said that last year's garden waste scheme was not environmentally friendly as collection trucks travelled for miles each week to pick up the waste before transporting it to a composting site in Essex.
"To say that the collection trucks cover 220 miles per week and then travel to Essex is not a good argument," wrote one respondent on the online form. "Firstly, there must be nearer places to take the garden waste and the number of people travelling to Wandsworth by car to get rid of their garden waste would increase enormously."
Many people suggested that composting areas could be set up in local parks, such as Ravenscourt, or that the waste should be taken somewhere else closer to home: "I'm surprised that the bags collected are being sent to Essex. Can't they be composted nearer to LBHF? Kew Gardens has a massive composting operation (the biggest compost heap in the UK, or so they claim). Couldn't we come to an arrangement with them?" said another participant in the survey.
Many of those who replied online objected to the Council's argument that under last year's registration scheme "95% of residents in H&F are subsidising the 5% who use the service".
"This looks to me like a cost-cutting initiative dressed up with dubious arguments about fairness. There are plenty of council services used by a minority. I suspect this is one that is not a statutory requirement to provide, so it is being attacked," commented one respondent.
We have so far been unable to see the results of the postal element of the consultation and it is not clear how many people responded by post or what their opinions were but, according to the Council, a majority opted for garden waste collections to be stopped entirely. They say that instead of a collection service, they want to encourage gardeners to compost their garden waste and that free composters will now be delivered to the first 3,000 people who apply.
"Surprisingly, there appears to be no great enthusiasm for keeping the garden waste collections," said Cllr Nick Botterill, cabinet member for the environment. "Most keen gardeners are very aware of the environment and that is reflected in the outcome of the consultation, with 667 people who responded to the consultation saying they were interested in composting.
"Driving large lorries round the borough's streets to collect a small amount of garden waste clearly makes less ecological sense than each garden owner recycling their own garden waste. As a result, we will be stopping separate garden waste collections. After we saw the consultation results, we decided to do our bit too by recycling the funding for garden waste collections into providing free compost bins for residents," he said.
However, 34% of those who took part in the online part of the consultation said they would not have space for a composting bin and 19% said they did not want one for other reasons. "My garden is too small, compost bins smell and my neighbours would object," and "Had one before, have enough foxes, rats and mice already. They are getting out of hand. Do not want to encourage more of them into the garden - it's like a zoo as it is," were typical comments.
The Council say that if residents have large items that are too big to recycle, such as tree prunings, or more than five sacks of garden waste, they will still be able to book a bulky waste collection for a small charge.
Rosemary Pettit of the Brackenbury Residents' Association says different alternatives for dealing with garden waste need to be looked into: "We are glad that the Council is promoting recycling, and, in particular, offering subsidised compost bins which offer one of the greenest recycling methods in the world. But we are dismayed that the Council expects to charge for the collection of bulky garden products, such as domestic woody prunings. This will not keep gardens tidy and may even discourage some residents from gardening at all. Although we accept that the previous scheme of trucking green waste to Essex for composting made no environmental sense, we want the Council to explore other alternatives to find the best environmental solution on every count. In the short-term we seek reassurance from the Council that any white sacks held by residents may be used as an alternative to black sacks and will be collected by Serco in the normal way," she said.
Councillor Eugenie White, who was part of the team that made the decision to scrap the service, said she had often seen collection trucks driving around with nothing to pick up.
She said the black bag waste service would continue to collect up to five bags per week of garden waste which would be taken to landfill.
"We are all sorry for having to make a decision on this service that was going to disappoint loyal, environmentally-focused, and heavy users," she said. "But it made little environmental sense and was becoming very costly. Longer term, it made more sense for our environment to have a greater number of the borough's residents doing more for the environment by composting their green kitchen waste, and some garden waste, than a few households sending large amounts occasionally to be composted out of London," she said.
Compost bins and bulky waste collections can be ordered by phoning the Council's cleaner, greener helpline on 020 8753 1100.
19 February 2009
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