Speaking to letsrecycle.com she said: “The councils are saying as long as our recycling rates are good, it doesn't matter. The government were very canny in introducing recycling league tables, and do you know what happens when the government introduces recycling league tables? Everyone wants to top them.”
“That has become the main priority right to the detriment of service and I call it an ‘unhealthy obsession'. It has gone from a genuine concern about diverting waste from landfill to an obsession with topping recycling league tables,” she added.
The staunch advocate of weekly collections did claim that the use of weekly food collections alongside alternate weekly collections (AWC) was a “step in the right direction” but feared councils had changed their priorities and had forgotten that they were a service provider.
Dissatisfaction
Having become synonymous with opposition to the use of AWC, Mrs Cocks claimed that councils using AWC would come to “regret that decision in two, three or four years” and forewarned the gradual reintroduction of weekly waste collections across the country due to residents' dissatisfaction.
The campaigner claimed that, despite her agenda being “completely non-political”, the issue of AWC had become a political issue, which was reinforced by the Conservative Party at its annual conference in Birmingham, where it claimed it would oversee the reintroduction of weekly waste collections if it came to power (see letsrecycle.com story).
Mrs Cocks said: “I think it is quite a ‘hot political potato'. I think the service that most people take advantage of all the council services is waste collection. If that is not going right in people's minds then they will not feel that they are getting value for money. Hardly anybody says to me that they are not interested in recycling but the problem is that they believe a weekly collection is essential,” she added.
Media
Since its inception in late 2001 and website launch in 2004, the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collections has been picked up on by the mainstream media and has seen a number of right-leaning publications quote the “well informed amateur” on a widespread of articles relating to waste and recycling.
Hardly anybody says to me that they are not interested in recycling but the problem is that they believe a weekly collection is essential
Doretta Cocks
Mrs Cocks said: “I think from all the reporters I have spoken to, the impression that I get is that a lot of them are London based and don't know what fortnightly collections are like.”
“I mean if I have been able to give them information to shortcut their research that to me is valuable. But I don't like the slant of some of the papers that they put on it. Some of them are obviously quite sensational in their reporting but I do think that their hearts are in the right place,” she added.
Calling on a wealth of anecdotal evidence from the 26,000 members of her campaign, Mrs Cocks said she had encountered disenfranchised voices from across the spectrum of the waste sector. She cited residents, binmen, MRF operators, environmental health officers and academics among the contributors to her cause.
She said: “I get information, a couple of good snippets. And, I get the papers ringing me up just on the off chance that I have heard something. But I always said that I would never, ever pass the information on of who our members are. I don't think interest in the topic is going away yet, I think it is becoming more high profile than ever.”
Recycling
Aware that she has been, in places, likened to a “crack-pot”, Mrs Cocks said that she was simply willing to help further the debate on waste and recycling collections and considered herself a “great recycler”. However, now she said had become somewhat more disillusioned.
Mrs Cocks claimed: “I have just become less enchanted as the years have gone on with the whole recycling idea than I was initially.”
“I think people tended to believe what they were saying when it was first introduced and I hate to use the word ‘propaganda' but I think that there was at first quite a lot of that on the need to recycle,” she added.
Aware that public confidence in recycling has slumped in the wake of downturns in markets for recovered materials, Mrs Cocks is keen for a better level of communication to be meted out by local authorities.
She said: “I think people are losing confidence that what their council is telling them is a) the truth and b) that they are doing as much as they thought they were to save the planet. I think that confidence is rapidly slipping.”
Contractors
The environmental scientist – who has a degree from the Open University – said there had been an “increasing number” of residents losing faith in local authority run waste collections under alternate weekly collections (AWC).
Mrs Cocks said: “I see householders using private contractors – that's increasing. Not only do they pay for refuse collections through their council tax, they are paying private contractors for the weeks that the council does not collect. It seems to be more and more common.”
“I think, gradually, the private companies will pick up on the fact that people are not happy and they are not treated as clients, they are being persecuted for genuine mistakes, in some cases. And, if somebody came to my door and offered me a weekly collection – which I would have to pay for – I would take it,” she added.
Pointing to the development of such companies in Winchester, Mrs Cocks said that she believed that if the practice could be made more sustainable over the winter months – when there are traditionally fewer complaints about AWC and therefore less demand for private contractors – then councils would struggle to maintain their services.
Background
Mrs Cocks began her campaign against the practise of AWCs following a series of spates with her local authority Eastleigh borough county over a rat infestation she saw as a direct result of the council introducing AWC.
Having lived in one of the trial areas when Eastleigh introduced AWC in 1996, Mrs Cocks was alarmed by the “sudden influx” of vermin on her premises and was certain that what she saw as direct correlation would be noticed by others.
She said: “I thought that somebody would see that this isn't the way to go and they would bring back weekly collections but, of course, nobody did.”
“And, councils across the country were saying how wonderful it is and how their recycling rates had increased and, whilst you have a sense of pride about that you thought, are they going about it the right way,” added Mrs Cocks.
Mrs Cocks said that the use of autoclave technology was the “future” of waste treatment and councils would struggle to maintain their hold on collections without adopting it.
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