This useful question came in from a local resident:

My green wheelie bin collection has changed to a Tuesday which is not a problem and since I moved into Melbourn nearly 4 years ago I have been using compostable kitchen caddy liners to put my kitchen food waste into.

This has never been a problem with the Councils refuse collectors until this week when they refused to empty my wheelie bin has the operative said it contained bags with food rubbish in. I explained that the bags where fully compostable and would disintegrate very quickly.

He said they were bio degradable and not allowed. He produced a card with do’s and don’ts which included bio degradable bags in the don’ts.

I’m unaware of any changes to the Councils requirements and I wonder if as the our council and Cambridge city have merged collection routes to save money, whether they have different requirements.

The operative told me to empty my green bin of the bags into my black wheelie bin which is just plain stupid.

Can you shed any light on this matter or try to find out the correct position with the two councils.

I asked the Council to comment, and received this reply:

I understand that there have been a number of queries about this issue since South Cambs and City reorganised their waste collection rounds recently. The collection crews are required to check recycling and organic bins for contamination prior to collection, and when householders put the wrong materials in their bins they are rejected and the householder advised to remove contamination before the bin is emptied. This avoids whole loads being rejected on delivery to our disposal site at Waterbeach. The diligence of the checking will vary between the crews and this resident’s bin should probably have been rejected in the past. It might be helpful to pass the following information on to this resident:

Although the liners are biodegradable they do not decompose completely in the (relatively) quick composting process used at Waterbeach, so the plastic and a proportion of organic material that is extracted with it are rejected in the screening process, resulting in additional cost to CCC. You can watch a 3-minute video here that shows want happens (see ‘Food and garden waste’ under the ‘What happens to Waste’ tab). Unfortunately, biobags do not break down quickly enough for the process at Amey. This means that when residents use biobags in the green bin some of the material cannot be processed into a beneficial product and it will end up being sent for further processing and increasing the cost to the council.

So the collection requirements have not changed, only the crew that is working on the round, as a result of the recent changes to collection rounds. This crew is clearly following the rules more rigorously than the previous crew working on this round.

Since you have separated out your food waste already, can we suggest lining the bottom of your bin with newspaper and empty the contents of your biobags into the green bin. The emptied biobags will need to be placed in the black bin. If this is not possible please contact the operations team at South Cambridgeshire District Council as they are responsible for the collection and they can make alternative arrangements with you. South Cambridgeshire also sell paper liners which can be collected from the Cambourne offices in packs of 50 for £4.10 or they can be purchased directly from www.alina.co.uk/southcambridgeshire for delivery to customers’ homes.”

The follow-up question of course is why this information is not well communicated – a request has been lodged to find out.

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