Hats off to Colchester borough council - from April it will be rolling out a new recycling scheme whereby you place your cardboard and paper in one clear, recycled plastic bag one week, and your plastic in the same style of bag the following week. Colchester will be providing 52 of these bags alongside the 52 black bags they currently provide, but the good news is that the lid finally comes off the plastic restrictions, with "most plastic" now being collected for recycling, including yoghurt pots, food trays and the like. I have a box in the loft ready to be recycled with just this kind of material in it, although I have - to my eternal shame - not been holding these types of plastic back from the bin for the past year or so since I had no response to my letter to the government minister responsible for waste.
The bags are clear to prevent people loading any old crap into them, but now there's no excuse for people not to recycle, as it makes it easier than ever. It'll nice to be able to purchase yoghurt again, knowing I'll be able to recycle the pots (I'd been restricting myself to the Co-op's own expensive range as they came in cardboard pots). I reckon our rubbish could be halved to as a result of this - we might be in a position to only put out a single rubbish bag once a fortnight.
All we need now is for this government to grow some balls and insist that local authorities start charging for waste collection based on the weight of the rubbish you put out. At the end of the day, our recycling rates will only start to rise once people are being hit in the pocket for not doing so.
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