Concerns raised over new rubbish collection rules.

A bid by East Devon District Council to further push up recycling rates is causing more problems than it is solving, a Honiton town councillor has claimed.

Concerns about waste disposal and recycling services in Honiton were raised at a meeting of the town council.

The district council has introduced a new system, which means waste will not be collected if wheelie bin lids are not fully closed.

Extra bags of waste are no longer to be collected and are being marked with a sticker explaining why it has not been collected.

Councillor Liz Tirard questioned the impact of these changes and said: “I can’t see how that solves anything. It is going to create more problems.”

District councillor Phil Twiss pointed out: “It is about trying to encourage people to recycle more.

“With a bit more thought, we can recycle a bit more.”

He said the system being introduced would be an ‘escalating scale of persuasion’ to make people look more carefully at what they are throwing away.

Concerns were also raised about the collection of bins in the town, which Councillor Tirard felt posed a tripping hazard for pedestrians.

Councillor Bayliss emphasised the need for more cardboard recycling, which he felt was a factor in causing bins to overflow.

He said: “Cardboard takes up an awful lot of space in the wheelie bin and if the cardboard was taken out it wouldn’t over flow.”

Councillor Twiss added: “That is our biggest challenge of all - to solve that one.”

The council heard that the main problem with introducing cardboard recycling on top of the existing services would involve a ‘massive capital investment’ to re-configure the current lorries.

Councillor Twiss said he would like to work towards finding more sites in the area to recycle cardboard.