Tories have no bottle

Like other Shrewsbury and Atcham residents I have just received my new bin and boxes for the October fortnightly collection.

Of course I am pleased the Conservative leaders of SABC have finally caught up with the rest of Shropshire and provided the means to increase our very poor recycling rate.

However, the local Conservatives' failure to join the Shropshire Waste Partnership needlessly delayed us reaching this point. But the glaring omission in the new system is the doorstep collection of plastic bottles. There isn't any.

Residents are frequently telling me this is the recyclable item they most want collected. They are bulky, awkward to deal with, mount up quickly in a family home and are difficult to store for long periods.

Residents are fed up with having to take them to the bottle banks, and more unnecessary car journeys are the result.

In terms of landfill they take up a lot of room, as we effectively end up paying to bury air. They take for ever to rot down and throwing them away means squandering irreplaceable fossil fuel.

Collecting plastic bottles would cure all these problems at a stroke. Other councils do, notably Stafford and Tamworth boroughs, Lichfield, Cannock Chase and Staffordshire Moorlands.

Just 25 two-litre plastic bottles can be recycled into a fleece jacket. Recycling one plastic bottle saves enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for six hours. The benefits are obvious. Why have Shrewsbury and Atcham Tories turned them down?

Councillor Jon Tandy, Shrewsbury