Retail giant Tesco has defended its plans to take over running of recycling banks situated at its stores from councils following critical coverage today in the national media.
letsrecycle.com first revealed the tensions between councils and Tesco last week when it was handed a letter issued from Tesco to local authorities telling them that council-owned banks needed to be removed by Thursday May 5 (see letsrecycle.com story).
And, today (April 27), The Telegraph outlined the impact of switching collections at Tesco recycling areas out of council control to DS Smith Recycling, formerly Severnside Recycling.
The newspaper claimed that the move would affect 500 sites across the county and drew particular attention to how it will potentially remove 100,000-a-year of revenue from two local authorities in the Cumbria area.
Furthermore, The Telegraph said Tesco stands to earn as much as 1 million-a-year in revenue from associated costs of material collected and recycling credits from councils.
However, the retailer has insisted that the introduction of one contractor across its stores will complement the work being done by local authorities.
A spokesman for Tesco said: “Some councils told us they were worried that they would no longer be able to maintain their store recycling facilities, so we developed this scheme which we think will complement the great work that councils are doing to increase doorstep recycling.”
Not fully representative
Despite the worried tone of The Telegraph article, the comments section at the bottom of the piece presents a much different appraisal of the situation, with many of the respondents supporting the move to privatise collections.
For example, one commentator, under the pseudonym Ruggefella, said: If Tescos [sic] are able to better operate the recycling for the neighbourhood so collections are frequent enough to mean there’s no waste over spilling from the bins then this move will get no complaints from me.
And, a spokesman for DS Smith Recycling told letsrecycle.com that the accounts in both newspapers were not fully representative.
He said: For example it refers to the case in Carlisle but does not balance the view to explain that other authorities had made decisions independent of Tesco to pull the service from Tesco sites. It was the pulling of services off Tesco sites that prompted Tesco to make a decision to ensure they could offer a consistent recycling service to their customers.
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