‘YES’ FOR BINS TRIAL

Households in four Lincolnshire villages will be given wheelie bins as part of a trial.

Homes in Cherry Willingham, Bardney, Fiskerton and Southrey will use the bins from February 9 next year.

But after a revolt by West Lindsey District councillors last night, the trial will be for three months instead of six.

And the bins will be emptied weekly instead of fortnightly, with overspill being taken away at a cost of 90p per bag. If the trial is a success, the rest of the district will get bins by September 2004

RESIDENTS FACE A LONG WAIT FOR WHEELIE BINS 11/11/03

Households in parts of West Lindsey could have their rubbish collected just once a fortnight under plans to introduce wheelie bins.

West Lindsey District Council is looking to introduce six-month trials of wheelie bins in Cherry Willingham and Bardney from February. The council aims to completely replace the current black bag system by spring 2005.

But once wheelie bins are introduced across the district, collections will be cut to once every fortnight because of the extra time it takes to empty bins.

The start date for wheelie-bins has repeatedly been put back as West Lindsey’s waste team struggles to find the best answer to first improve recycling options. But councillors will tomorrow night consider setting up two trials of wheelie bins, limited to Cherry Willingham Bardney, Southrey and Fiskerton.

The aim is try out bins of different sizes in different areas and monitor how much gets thrown out and how much is recycled. Just over 1,400 homes in Cherry Willingham will get a 160 litre bin to try. Larger 240 litre bins will be given to 1,279 homes in the Bardney area because they do not have a weekly collection of recyclable paper, cans and plastic.

Because results will not be clear until next October, head of West Lindsey’s environment services, Jim Nicholson, said there will be implications for the rest of the district.

“It probably wouldn’t be a good time to introduce a new service on the back of the trial coming up to Christmas,” he said.

“Once we have procured vehicles with bin lifts and arranged the rounds, I don’t imagine it will start to be rolled out until early 2005.”

In a report to tomorrow’s environment committee Mr Nicholson said the cost of wheelie bins over 10 years would be no more than the £40,000 spent each year providing one black bag per week to each household.

“The purpose of the trial is to see how people manage with and without recycling options. I would hope that with collections only on alternate weeks people will feel an incentive to recycle more.”

By the time the trials are complete next August, there should be other recycling programmes in place to support the target of reusing 18 per cent of waste in 2005/06.

“Cherry Willingham has the best recycling service in the district, a weekly collection of three materials and a 23 per cent take up on the green waste service, so we can assess what impact that has on the amount people put into residual waste,” said Mr Nicholson.

“Bardney, however, just has the fortnightly paper collection and green waste service for the 10 per cent who subscribe, so we would expect more residual waste.”

The authority hopes that the introduction of wheelie bins would mean people could move their rubbish to the kerb more easily and reduce littering from split bags.

Cherry Willingham post master Jan Glazer said he could not wait to take collection of a wheeled bin, but questioned whether it would be big enough for a family of four