I P Freely - a 50/50 split meant a new lorry from the last scheme, and it can only carry half the amount of rubbish, so has to make more frequent trips to the empyting point/depot, and cannot complete as much as previous lorries meaning that more lorries and crew are needed. Both of these have added costs in some areas whilst saving in others. But before, we used one crew for recycling OR green waste and one crew for rubbish, but we still need one crew for green waste, and now we need more people for the combi lorry.

That they may be mixing the rubbish annoys me immensely. To be lectured at like a little child about the importance of recycling, only for the council to take my carefully sorted rubbish and put it all in a hole in the ground is nothing short of criminal. "Having a word" will probably do nothing. If I ever see it, I'll chase them down the road and get their names/license plates and even think about parking my car across the front of the lorry until they contact the council and say what they have done. Why waste my time being green if they just do it for statistics. I don't. I do it because it should be done, not to tick a blooming box!

   Smiffy - As the truck has a 50/50 split, it is only one lorry that comes round anyway.

I'm not sure there is an added cost to collecting recycling on a weekly basis.

The least amount of time the recycling hangs around the better for me!

   The problem is that we don't have concrete figures to work from, so Mistwalker for example assumes that recycling has gone up ("Lots of households never recycled or had any black boxes, the amount that were sent out were in the thousands so this must mean that more people are recycling"), and I assume that the council is being 'clever' with the figures. It'd be nice to work with raw facts (and circumvent my cynicism!).

   Mistwalker - I agree that there must people recycling more than previously or have finally decided to stop being lazy and join the club many of us have been part of years, but I suspect this is still the vast minority of residents. The changes in the waste and recycling therefore impact the majority for the benefit of the minority, which doesn't make sense.

I also think it is the minority of people who see any benefit in a weekly recycling collection. Surely if it is overflowing with a 2 week collection, you get another box and then people won't have to do the lazy thing and just put it in with the normal waste ? It really doesn't need a collection lorry to come round every week because people can't order a new box?

   Kobayashi - The trucks are meant to be split 50-50 but I also have seen them chuck the recycling and waste into same compartment on occasion. I rang the council who said they would raise it to the waste team.

Mavdo - Lots of households never recycled or had any black boxes, the amount that were sent out were in the thousands so this must mean that more people are recycling, as to how much then would have to raise an FOI to the council to get exact figures. Weekly collection has helped us as we put things in the boxes that might have gone in the bin as they were overflowing for a fotnightly collection.

Woky - they will only have a finite amount of funds and if they have to pay penalties for not meeting targets this will mean money having to be taken from other services to cover the costs. This may have to be front line services such as children services and social cares budgets being reduced.

   Has anyone else noticed that they just chuck the recycling from the black bins in with the normal rubbish? Is it just me? or does this defeat the object...........

   Remember the quote "The bags are much better than the ones you can get from the supermarket"?

Tell that to the bin man who picked one up only to see the bag split and the contents spill onto the road.

   Not long ago we were told that the scheme might be reviewed, but now it is deemed a success via rather ambiguous statistics there is no chance. I agree with the other comments that the stats mean absolutely nothing. If a council restricts the amount it will take, of course the amount going to landfill will reduce - but how much is going to landfill via other routes?

It is also really hard to accurately measure the increase in recycling and a 32% increase doesn't sound realistic. I would expect it to increase a bit, especially as we have the overkill solution of weekly recycling, but I can't see how it would go up so much when a lot of people were doing a pretty good job at recycling before the changes came in.

I suspect we will keep getting random figures saying how wonderful the council are as sadly they still seem very arrogant and ignorant to the fact that many residents dislike the scheme and are having to put a lot more time and effort making extra trips to the tip to get rid of the waste, recycling and green waste that the council should be taking in the first place.

The may well be saving £1 million and the argument will be that "we are all in it together", but the reality is that the new scheme was poorly planned and executed, and it has been forced on us purely as a money saving scheme. I can suggest a way of further saving money - make recycling fortnightly as we simply don't need a weekly recycling collection. I think it is just disappointing that the council don't listen to its residents as they could (and should) have asked the residents whether they would accept a small council tax rise to maintain the previous waste and recycling provision. Councillors seem to forget that they are elected to represent the residents!

I guess we can rant all we like on these forums, which feels good to get it out of the system, but in reality things will never change!

   Agree largely with Mavdo. I would very ,much like to see some raw statistics, as it is extremely common for politicians at all levels (and private companies) to use statistics in a misleading way.

   See

http://www.getwokingham.co.uk/news/s/2118214_fury_over_6000_payment_for_councillors

   And the amount arriving at the tip or having to be cleared from our streets? How has that changed?

The only reason rubbish collected from houses is down 21% is because people can't have massive clearouts and leave them to be collected any more. Instead, they put them in their cars and drive them to the tip. I want to know how much MORE waste is arriving at RE3 sites. Having said that, I don't disagree with more waste going there because then there are experts present to sort the big bits into things that can be recycled, I just wish that statistics weren't so readily converted into lies!

Recycling is not up 32%. Why would it be? We are just doubling the times that half the amount can be collected! We can't recycle any more now than we could this time last year! The amount of people putting non-recyclable things into the recycling boxes might have gone up, which then go into landfill via a different route, but somehow still count as "recycling", but recycling itself is not up by this amount.

It's just a pack of statistics being used to prove how successful a scheme is when it really is nothing even close to it.

   Why mention 'social care and children's services' being potential losers of funding if landfill targets are not being met? It sounds very much like "If you don't tidy your room, you'll not get any pocket money."

   Well no big surprise the amount of landfill has dropped as they are now just burning the blue bags.