Recycling nightmare for Rudheath woman (From Northwich Guardian)
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Recycling nightmare for Rudheath woman
4:10pm Saturday 30th June 2012 in News
By Beth Allcock
Recycling nightmare for Rudheath woman
A DISABLED woman was reduced to tears after being challenged about the state of items she had put in her plastic bins to be recycled.
Rudheath resident Josephine Mather, 56, suffers from Cerebral Palsy and is partially sighted, requiring a wheeled trolley to get out and about.
In attempt to make her life a little easier, she was put on the assisted bin register by Cheshire West and Chester Council (CWAC).
The Porter Way resident said she was assured by CWAC that the situation was taken care of and that instead of putting her bins at the front of her property for collection, she would just be required to leave them in her yard.
But when her two recycling boxes, black bin and grey bin were not emptied on June 21, Josephine approached a bin man and showed him the containers, which were packed full of rubbish which had been correctly sorted into the coloured boxes.
“He got right up in my face and he said ‘we don’t collect this’,” said the Porter Way resident.
“He said there was maggots in the bin and you are supposed to wash the tins out, and also supposed to pull off the labels and squash them down.
“But bearing in mind I am severely disabled and partially sighted, is very difficult.
“It reduced me to tears - that’s how bad it was.”
She added: “I pay my taxes like everybody else and I am entitled to have my bins emptied.
“I feel that the council does not take this sort of thing into account, these people that sit in these offices.
“They need to spend a day in the life of a disabled person because they just don’t understand.
“I just can’t believe what happened, I still can’t get my head around it.”
Josephine said she had been left so upset and angry about the incident, she was reluctant to again follow the council’s advice and leave the bins in her yard, and may instead attempt to carry them to the front of her home.
“I’ve been told this week to leave the bins and let them collect them from the yard but I can’t put up with all that rigmarole again,” she said.
“I don’t want to be spoken to like that, it was humiliating.”
A council spokesman said: “We are sorry that the lady concerned is upset however the worker from May Gurney says he conducted himself in the correct manner when trying to explain to the resident about the boxes and the new service schedule.
“A supervisor later visited the lady to discuss her concerns and he arranged for her domestic waste to be collected as soon as possible."
Comments(5)
J Bear
says...
8:33pm Sun 1 Jul 12
Johnna
says...
1:04pm Mon 2 Jul 12
nicksey
says...
1:11pm Mon 2 Jul 12
The Jazz
says...
6:10pm Mon 2 Jul 12
nicksey says...
12:22pm Sun 1 Jul 12
Like others I used to have a green wheely bin and a brown wheely bin. Some months ago I was informed by CWAC that I had the wrong type of green wheely bin. This is despite the fact that it is the bin that I inherited from the previous owner of my property and the same bin that they had been emptying for at least 3 years. They arranged for the wrong bin to be collected and the correct one to be delivered. The problem with the old one was that the lid was the wrong colour!
So then we had a new green bin plus the brown one. They then decided that we needed a change in bin colours for the new system, so we had weeks of chaos on our streets as the perfectly usuable brown bins were stacked up waiting for someone to come along to knock the wheels off and then eventually be taken away to be replaced by a black bin. Why could they not save 'our' money by using the same bins for the new system as they had for the old?
During the process I waited for my info pack that would explain the new system but nothing arrived, I telephoned CWAC and was told one would be sent out to me, but nothing arrived, the following week I called again and was again promised a pack in the post, but again nothing arrived. I then went into the Information Shop in town, but they said that they did not have any there but would get one sent to me. This time it did arrive, but about 3 weeks after the bin change.
I then wanted to check to make sure that my bin collection day had not changed and went online to find thay although my home address was listed, there was no information available for my property.
On reading the pack I see that some of our recycled waste is transported elsewhere in the country to be processed, using yet more fuel and resorces to do so.
This is all wrong, it is recycling for the sake of being seen to be doing it. It is recycling at a cost to us as individuals and at a cost to the planet it is not what recycling is supposed to be about.