Merton's Labour Council has dismantled yet another element of the borough's recycling process. With immediate effect, food waste liners will no longer be delivered to residents, although they will be available at libraries. Clearly food waste recycling will decline on top of the already falling recycling rates, just like when Labour started charging for green waste removal. That calamitous policy led to garden waste collection volumes reducing by 75%. The consequence of these anti-recycling policies is that more green and now food waste will end up in general landfill or be incinerated.
This is incoherently barking mad because food waste is far cheaper to process than general waste - there isn't an environmental tax on recycling like there is on landfill waste - so cutting this service will in turn increase waste processing costs.
Labour's bleating that budgets need trimming is typically bunkum. Merton Council spends over £500,000 per annum on communications and marketing, including delivering their My Merton mag, chock full of propaganda. Why don't the council use the same deliverers to deliver bin liners? It's quite simply a question of priorities. As Labour knows, in their true Big Brother style, their propaganda piece is far more important to their election chances than worthy recycling.
Needless to say, as Conservatives we are committed to re-introducing free bin liners to all residents along with a free green waste service. This will improve the environment: Our policy is to reduce, reuse, recycle not dump or burn in noxious incinerators.