Waste campaign success

Pictured left to right: Lib Dem Councillors Sue Hope, Claire Young, Dave Hockey, Pat Hockey and Marc Scawen.

Years of campaigning by your Lib Dem Focus Team have paid off with news that by March 2011 there will be kerbside plastic bottle collections and weekly collection of food waste in South Gloucestershire.

Cllr Dave Hockey, the Lib Dem spokesperson on waste, said, "This is good news for local residents and the environment.

Kerbside collection of plastic bottles will mean many more are recycled rather than being dumped in landfill, saving oil and avoiding massive financial penalties for the Council, which would be passed on to Council tax-payers

Food waste currently makes up more than a third of the waste in our black bins and in landfill generates methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Experience elsewhere in the country shows that when residents see how much food they're throwing away, they cut waste, saving hard-pressed households money in these difficult economic times.

Residents have been demanding these services for years and despite the Lib Dems proposing plastic bottle collections 5 years running at budget time, the other parties did not back us. The current Tory administration has failed miserably to achieve its high-profile target of recycling or composting more than half our waste by the end of March 2010. Thank goodness we've finally got our message through to them."