AVDC drops 23 places among local authorities for recycling and composting: now 383rd out of 394

In the past year Aylesbury Vale District Council (AVDC) has dropped a further 23 places among local authorities for recycling and composting: it is now 383rd out of 394 local authorities throughout England - 11 places from the bottom of the league tables. (Six years ago it stood 156th out of 408 local authorities).

Details of recycling rates at www.letsrecycle.com

AVDC appear to have relied too much on BCC sorting out the issue with compostable waste, while doing little to encourage the process. It is symptomatic of the lack of initiative that has become, in many situations, the trademark of the council. Refuse and recycling is a core activity of the council, and it has failed to to do it adequately.

Recently Councillor Corry Cashman, who has represented Cheddington ward the past 12 years, wrote this in his Focus, distributed to local homes.

He points out the information is applicable to all of AVDC.

"Anticipated changes to refuse and recycling collections and the introduction of a new "brown bin" for cardboard and other compostable waste.

At the time of writing it is unlikely that any changes to Cheddington's present pattern of collections will occur in the next two years.

While the District Council is responsible for collections, the county Council is responsible for disposing or recycling it. (All Buckinghamshire's District Councils and the County Council work together as the "Joint Waste Authority"). The County have made two attempts, at Hardwick and Westcott, to build a treatment plant which would have been able to treat brown bin waste (cardboard and garden waste etc). The two locations were found to be unacceptable on planning and financial grounds respectively. So it will not be possible, in the absence of a treatment plant, to introduce a brown bin scheme.

This situation has [had] consequences. Seven years ago Aylesbury Vale District Council came 156th out of 408 local authorities for its recycling rates. In 2007 - 08, the last year for which records are presently available, it was 360th out of 393 local authorities. (It has since slipped even further down -- see the figures above).

The cabinet member on AVDC, responsible for Environment and Health, has said that if it were not for the treatment plant problems AVDC would have been in the top part of that table.

It is anticipated, planning consent and other issues permitting, that from 2014 most green bin refuse will no longer go to landfill site but will be sent, for incineration, to an "Energy from Waste" plant in Bedfordshire. It is encouraging to note that the amount of green bin refuse has been steadily reducing for the past couple of years."