THE points Cllr Eades makes in his letter regarding Poole Council’s green waste collection service are somewhat inaccurate.

Cllr Eades bases his arguments on the lack of take-up of the service. Over 12,500 households (not 10,000 as he states) have opted in to the scheme, equating to 19 per cent, not 15 per cent and numbers are rising fast.

To claim that the chargeable service will lead to an ‘environmental disaster’ is rather dramatic as most people would consider that to be something along the lines of a major oil spill, not the hypothetical possibility of a council refuse lorry driving down a road and only collecting one bin. Cllr Eades states he has ‘no doubt’ in his mind that people who don’t sign up for a green bin will either put their green waste in black bins (costing money in landfill taxes), fly-tip or burn it.

I wonder on what grounds he has such poor faith in Poole residents to do the right thing for the environment. We know, from the survey undertaken last summer, that the majority of people who haven’t previously had access to the green bin service, either take green waste to the recycling centre (often on the way to somewhere else rather than a single trip), home compost or use the mobile green waste collection points.

The implementation of the scheme is still a work in progress. But success is not about how many people opt in to the collection scheme but how much green waste we can keep out of landfill sites, as this is costing us all money that could be better spent elsewhere.

CLLR XENA DION, Portfolio Holder for Environment and Consumer Protection