Bin snoops are a recycling hit
Snooping on residents' rubbish is drastically increasing recycling, it has been claimed.
Gosport Borough Council officers have been out checking residents' recycling bins to make sure they contain the right waste.
In the latest operation, council officers checked 679 bins in the Normandy Gardens area of Gosport.
Of these 306 contained some items that could not be recycled – and the bin was emptied but fixed with a reminder of what should go in it.
But a further 23 were so full of non-recyclable waste that the council refused to take them.
David Jago, the council's environmental services manager, said checking bins saved the council money.
He said the council received up to 100 for a lorry load of recycling goods.
But the higher the percentage of no-recyclable goods it contained, the less money the council got.
He said: 'We're not in any way trying to penalise people. We're not spying on them. The purpose is to improve the quality of the recycling and potentially improve the income to the council.
'The better the quality of the recycling we collect, the more money we get for the recycling and that essentially means less council money is being used.'
He added: 'Our intention is to educate, not penalise. Unlike some councils, we are not issuing fixed penalty tickets. We're trying to be as helpful to the population as we possibly can.'
Mr Jago said that similar campaigns earlier in the year had improved the quality of the recycling.
He said: 'In the Beryton Road area 42 per cent of bins were rejected but six weeks after the tags went out that had dropped to 18 per cent.
'In Anglesey it dropped from 42 per cent to 24 per cent and in Clayhall Road it went from 49 per cent to 25 per cent.'
But Cllr Graham Burgess, deputy leader of Gosport Conservatives, said he was unhappy with the tactics.
He said: 'I'm totally against snooping in bins. This is not the way to do it at all.
'The council needs to have clear stickers on the outside of the bins saying what and what cannot be put in the bins.
'Admittedly, if an area is particularly bad at putting the right kind recyclables in the bins then the council should put notes out on the bins. But it should be the exception – not the standard. They definitely should not be rummaging through on a daily basis.'
It is the second time in a month that the council's tactics have been questionned after it admitted last month that teams of officers were spying on dog walkers.
Councils have power to inspect bins under, even on owner's property, under the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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