EPPING FOREST: 'No fines for not sorting rubbish', say residents

11:30am Monday 22nd March 2010

By James Ranger

THE PEOPLE of Epping Forest have rejected government plans to fine them up to £1,000 for not properly sorting their household and garden waste, while acknowledging that the council could do more to make recycling easier.

The Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) could introduce penalties for people failing to adhere to complex new rules on sorting their household waste, according to the Daily Mail.

Reports suggest the fines could run as high as £1,000 in an effort to reduce the amount of recyclable waste ending up in the nation's landfills.

Residents in the district have two bins in their gardens – one for household waste and one for 'green' garden waste – as well as a small caddy for temporarily storing food waste in the kitchen.

Waste and recycling collections were thrown into chaos earlier this year during the heavy snow and icy road conditions, with hundreds of households waiting up to five weeks for a collection while the council struggled to clear the backlog.

An Epping Forest District Council spokesman said the council has never fined people for incorrectly sorting their waste and that there was no possibility of introducing fines as far as the council was aware.

The Guardian asked the people of the district what they thought about the council's waste collection service and the prospect of a hefty fine for getting it wrong.

Raymond Lovick, 76, Forest Road, Loughton The collections are quite good on the whole, they come round on time and everything. I think the £1,000 fine is a load of nonsense to be quite honest. Do the people who collect the rubbish even have time to sort through it all to see if we're doing it properly? And what if someone comes along and puts a bag of rubbish in one of your bins, which they could quite easily do?

Anne Hodge, 58, Theydon Grove, Epping
The collections are quite good, but I think all this recycling is a load of nonsense really. In your recycling, you put in all your tins can, paper, glass – and my husband works in plastics and I know that most of it isn't recyclable anyway. The wheelie bins are very ugly too, I don't think many people like seeing them sitting outside their houses.

Bridget and Paul De Kretser, 38 and 39, of Lower Swaines, Epping
The service is good, always collected on time. I think the fine is alright, it's a good idea. I think people need to be encouraged to recycle more because some people don't bother. You have to be a bit more forceful with some people.

Roy Weller, 62, Coopersale Common, Coopersale
The service is good now, when it first started it was a bit unreliable at times. I think the fine is a bit heavy-handed, it's a lot of money, especially at the moment for people. We have bins for rubbish and for green waste, but where's the bins for recycling? At the moment we have to get plastic bags from local shops, which is a bit of a pain.

And what if they've run out? We have to go to the town hall. Something I did notice was that the new green bins have a space for a microchip in, which I think is to check how much waste you're putting in. I'd like to see proof that this waste is going to where it should be going as well.

Tina Noble, 47, Theydon Grove, Epping
I think the service is good but the one thing there's a problem with the green waste bins. I'm alright because I only have a small garden by my elderly mother has a very large garden, and she can't fit all the grass cuttings and things in the bin because it's too small. So in theory, could she be fined for putting some grass cuttings in her main bin? There's no way she could take big bags of grass down to a council centre or anything.

Trevor Newman, 71, Shaftsbury Road, Epping
I think the idea of a £1,000 fine is a load of rubbish. What if you're a young mum with a couple of kids, people like that are too busy to sort all this stuff out. But there are some people who should be fined or have something done about them. There's a bloke down my road who doesn't bother sorting anything, and he's got all the time in the world.