The Welsh county council said the announcement of the new twin-bin scheme for 10,000 homes had seen residents scrambling to get hold of their blue kerbside boxes.
 The move to fortnightly residual waste collections has seen Denbighshire residents jumping to use their blue kerbside recycling boxes |
This is because under the new “X2” scheme, residual waste now will be collected every fortnight in grey wheeled bins, rather than each week. Green waste is collected on the alternate week via green wheeled bins.
And, the council has said any extra residual waste that cannot fit in the grey wheeled bins each fortnight will not be collected.
The scheme has already been rolled out to homes in the Rhyl and Prestatyn areas, but the three-phase roll out will eventually see most homes in the county provided with the service.
Blue boxes
The blue boxes allow glass, cans, textiles and plastic bottles to be collected every week from 22,000 homes, while paper is collected in blue bags. But so many residents had mislaid their blue recycling boxes through a lack of usage that the council has had to procure additional boxes.
A spokeswoman for the council explained: “We already had the blue box scheme, but a lot of people didn't use it. When we introduced the two-bin scheme, people wanted to recycle again but couldn't find their boxes, so our contractor SITA had to roll out more than it expected.”
Homes on the new X2 collection scheme will also be getting a special “dumpy bag” for plastic recycling soon. The weighted 75 litre re-usable bags will free up space in the blue boxes for glass bottles and jars, food and drinks cans.
To help keep out rainwater and inquisitive pets, the council is also providing lids for the blue boxes.
“Reliable”
Councillor Eryl Williams, Denbighshire's cabinet member for environment, said: “We acknowledge that there was a problem with the blue bins, but I am happy to report that the vast majority of collections are now reliable for the vast majority of households are managing with the supplied bin.
“With any major change of system there will inevitably be some teething problems and there certainly were with this scheme. But all concerned have worked hard to improve things and figures are starting to speak for themselves,” he added.
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Despite the problems, the council said the delay to the scheme should not affect its chances of meeting its 25% recycling target for municipal waste in 2006/07. The county achieved a 26% recycling rate from April to June this year.
There are a further 22,000 homes in Denbighshire offered no blue box service, but the council plans to role out the scheme to at least 75% of its households in the next few years.
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