The Labour-run borough announced the planned move via its social media last week (22 August), put down to “the ongoing challenge to recruit HGV drivers”.
Currently, the borough has weekly separate food waste and residual waste collections, with the latter set to change to fortnightly in February 2023.
On 22 August the council announced in a now deleted Twitter post that it will push recycling back to fortnightly to prioritise collecting residual waste, with the authority also saying “this is what the government advises”.
But the decision was scrapped the next day after an uproar from residents and even other Labour councillors.
Following the backlash, Councillor Averil Lekau, deputy leader and cabinet member for climate change, environment and transport, said: “Due to the ongoing challenge to recruit HGV drivers, we took a decision last week to prioritise collecting green and black top bins over blue bins as this is what the Government advises.
“However, it was a mistake to say blue top recycling bins will only be collected every two weeks until further notice and we have rectified the proposal with immediate effect. We will aim to collect all rounds as normal moving forward and if any rounds are missed, we will do our best to collect them as soon as possible.”
Residual waste
In September 2020, the council announced changes to its residual waste collection, which are to take effect from February 2023 (see letsrecycle.com story).
On its website, it explained that it was making the changes as part of its action against the climate emergency and would help with reduction of vehicle emissions by 60 tonnes of CO2.
The council added that many London boroughs which have switched to bi-weekly general waste collection have seen recycling rates go up.
The move also aims to support the Mayor of London’s Environment Strategy to reach a recycling rate of 50% by 2025 across London.
In the 2020/2021 financial year, the borough had a recycling rate of 31.5%, down from 33.2% the previous year.
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