Letter: In praise of our recycling

It’s not that long ago that all of our waste was being sent to landfill. Through long-term planning, Calderdale now ranks as one of the best recycling boroughs in the country.

There are around 90,000 households in the area and 26,000 complaints have been made to the council about the recycling changes since August 1. Each household has had its recycling collected about 22 times under the new contract.

That’s about two million collections. Thus complaints make up 1.3 per cent of collections. (Assuming that is that each person only complains once which seems unlikely.)

Mary Drost asks “what was wrong with the original service?”. Probably very little but if that were a reason not to change things we would all still be living in the dark ages.

The new contract with Suez has seen an increase in the number of things we can recycle and I would imagine for the people doing the collecting, the new lorries make collecting the material much more efficient.

Alas as with all change, it takes time to perfect.

Last week I went online to check when my recycling would be collected as it was the Christmas weekend.

Before putting out the bags and boxes I made use of the online food recycling bag ordering service.

Within half an hour, Suez had been to collect the recycling...and a brand new roll of green bags delivered. That is progress.

In a few years a new contract will no doubt start and further improvements made. I guarantee there will be problems (and, alas, complaints).

That will not invalidate making the change in the first place.

Andrew Sykes, by email