Sir,
The general public are constantly being reminded to sort and recycle the maximum amount of domestic and garden waste, and Monmouth residents are reportedly scoring highly for their conscientious efforts.
A different set of criteria appears to apply to trade wastes from shops in the town -almost any weekday morning the compactors of Monmouthshire Cleansing and SITA are hard at work loading apparently unsorted trade waste, in particular cardboard and glass from the major shops, restaurants and licensed premises. I assume that all of it is destined for landfill.
Admittedly, traders are paying for the "privilege" of stuffing their containers indiscriminately: presumably they feel that they achieve immediate economies on staff and facility costs through not having to sort and store the recyclable materials.
Or are there obscure DEFRA regulations prohibiting on-premises sorting of waste without the appropriate licence precluding shop keepers from segregating their trade waste?
This is simply not good enough. It smacks of the same mentality as the proposed co-mingling of domestic recyclables.
Let's have some consistency in Monmouthshire County Council's Cleansing Department's policies, which should surely be to recycle the maximum possible within an overall economically justifiable package!
Robert Davis
(Osbaston)