Peter Craske on reycling in Bexley

Cllr Peter Craske is Bexley’s cabinet member for places

For the past 14 years Bexley has achieved the highest recycling rate in London, and it’s thanks to our residents that we have been so successful.

We asked you to help us shape the service for the next decade and I want to thank you for your feedback.  We’ve considered your comments carefully.

We’ve also looked at what is financially sustainable and how we can increase the amount of waste we are recycling.

It’s important to remember that our success at recycling saves Bexley’s council taxpayers about £3.6million a year, compared to the alternative costs of collection and incineration. The changes we’re making will reduce the cost of the service by £450,000 a year.

This will help to support other important local services.

The changes that we’ll be making from this summer will see every eligible household receive two wheelie bins to replace the three boxes they currently have for recycling – a blue-lidded wheelie bin for paper/ cardboard recycling and a white-lidded wheelie bin for mixed recycling.

They will be collected fortnightly on alternate weeks. The new wheelie bins will be available in different sizes and you’ll be able to choose the size you need.

We know – because you’ve told us – that you don’t want us to change collections of non- recyclable waste (green bin) and we will continue to collect this fortnightly.

We will also continue to collect your food recycling (small brown box) every week. Larger more secure food boxes are available and can be collected at roadshows which we’ll be running at the end of April.

We will be extending our current street services contract with Serco by 18 months so that we can make these changes.

With your support, we will continue to be the London borough with the highest recycling rate and we’ll all help create the cleaner and greener Bexley of tomorrow.