A Bit on the Side

of your wheelie bin, that is!
When the Environment select committee reviewed Wastes Management we recommended that when plastic and cardboard was being collected for recycling no side waste should be collected from households (with an exception over the Christmas/New Year period if needed). A report to the committee today claimed that this was working well and my own observation is that there is a lot less waste put out in Eaglescliffe than there used to be. Immediately another member of the committee said that he'd not seen much reduction in his ward. So we ask for more information and some evidence of what's happening across the Borough as a whole.
We move on to discuss anaerobic digesters and food waste collections and we need more information and evidence of progress in discussions.
I begin to wonder why we're having this meeting, the second one recently when we ended up with more questions than answers, but then reflect that every time we discuss the issues we have different questions. That's part of what makes scrutiny work - we ask questions for which the answers haven't been carefully prepared in advance. And sometimes we get interesting answers! Now we look forward to the review of collections to be done in April when everyone's had the cardboard and plastic recycling for at least 6 months.
Meanwhile we do our bit to reduce our own carbon footprints by turning off the boiler when everyone's got a cup of coffee and hurrying out as soon as the meeting finishes so that the lights can be turned off (in my dreams!)