Member

It was the case that about 80% of councils collected fortnightly and several continued to collect weekly. In fact, places such as Westminster and similar collect more than once a week. We had seen only about seven or eight councils move to three-weekly collections. My fear is that we are starting to see a massive acceleration, particularly in councils led by Greens or Liberal Democrats, towards three-weekly collection of basically residual waste. Of course, food waste will be required to be collected every week but, frankly, I am worried about environmental health issues that will start to arise as we start to see three-weekly collections. Indeed, in Bristol, the council has decided to move to four-weekly collections. I genuinely believe that this could become a real issue and that people might say that this is about money or about trying to require or encourage people to do even more recycling. I genuinely believe it is a mistake, and I hope in many ways I am proved wrong.