Hounslow council admits all street bin rubbish including recycling goes to landfill

West London's Hounslow council has been accused of misleading the public over it's recycling after it admitted that all waste from street bins - including from recycling bins - goes to landfill or is incinerated.

The council said that despite providing separate recycling receptacles with its public bins, the waste is not sorted and it is all disposed of together.

Hounslow changed its recycling and waste services last year to save £1.3 million. The target it had was to recycle half of all waste by next year. Currently only around 33 per cent has been achieved — well below the national average.

A spokesperson from Hounslow Council has said: “There are 750 street litter bins in the borough, only 150 of these are dual bins with a recycling compartment. Dual bins were introduced to encourage residents to recycle, however, our collection crews have found the waste in these bins to be routinely contaminated. Because of these behaviours it has not been possible to recycle waste from dual bins. The 75,000 residents’ homes in the borough are unaffected and recycling from these properties is collected weekly."To ensure transparency going forward, the Council and Hounslow Highways have taken steps to ensure that all signage pertaining to dual bins being available for recycling is no longer visible. Residents should now be aware that street bins are to be used for general waste only.The Council has invested in a number of measures to increase recycling in the borough, including: moving from fortnightly to weekly recycling collections;issuing residents with boxes to separate plastics, glass, paper and cardboard so they can play an active role in recycling their waste;building a new state-of-the-art waste and recycling facility where over 16,000 tonnes of recycling will be processed each year;launching a high-profile awareness campaign to discourage littering and fly-tipping.”