SIR,
If Monmouthshire County Council goes ahead with implementing its ill-founded Waste Strategy, council officers will soon be replacing our efficient Black Box recycling scheme by the more expensive co-mingled system.
This will result in more material going to landfill, increased use of single-use plastic sacks, a greater impact upon our increasingly fragile environment, and increased costs.
The decision by the majority of our county councillors to support the Waste Department's incomplete and error ridden report ('Report on the Council's Waste Strategy and Implementation', May 2009) was taken without the benefit of public consultation.
Most significantly, the report did not properly consider the recommendations of industry experts or the views of the Welsh Assembly Government.
Co-mingled collections are renowned for being more expensive and more harmful to the environment, and so the decision to switch to co-mingled collections was wrong.
This issue reveals the sad fact that many of our councillors do not always properly consider the reports put before them.
Councillors who simply vote as directed by fellow councillors, without considering the facts, have little value to our community.
We need councillors who can assess information, verify sources, carry out simple calculations, and ask good probing questions of our council officers.
Steve Rawlings
(Chepstow)