Rubbish performance for Lib Dems

Richard Normington has crunched the numbers again on the Lib Dems' poor performance at recycling in Cambridge.

Conservative Huntingdonshire has extended its lead over Lib Dem Cambridge in the recycling stakes according to the latest statistics.

Despite lots of hot air on global warming being produced at the Guildhall for public consumption, the figures show a different story of how the Lib Dems have let Cambridge lose the race to recycle.

Now, some 57.2 per cent of household waste in Tory Huntingdonshire is for reuse, recycling or composting. This is compared to just 41.2 per cent for Cambridge.

The Tory authority extended its 2001 lead of one per cent to 16 percent today

This poor performance is despite the city Lib Dem insistence that fortnightly waste collections are either necessary to keep up recycling rates or to save money.

The Lib Dem arguments are nonsense (see an old press release full of bluster from the Lib Dems in the name of the relevant former executive councillor, Cllr Rosenstiel).

On recycling rates: the current advice from the city council is to use the black bin for food waste in the alternate weeks in which the green bins aren't emptied. That would no longer need to be the case if at least the green bins were emptied weekly. Better service needn't mean less recycling.

On saving money: the cost of handling non-recycled waste has increased significantly in recent years due to the government's bin taxes. Fortunately the Conservatives announced that they would pull back from Labour's punitive approach and make it easier for local authorities to collect all waste weekly if they wanted to.