'There's no room for any more wheelie bins'

Sylvia Thorogood is an avid recycler.

But her local council in Braintree, Essex, does not currently collect glass, so the retired shop owner takes her bottles and jars to recycling banks at supermarkets, or her nearby waste recycling centre.

However, from June, glass will be collected from a new blue-lid wheelie bin that every household in the district will receive. It will also take cartons, plastic bottles and bags.

Another new wheelie bin will collect cardboard and paper. It means most households will have four receptacles.

"What they are coming up with now is going to be impossible for a lot of people with very small gardens," Thorogood said.

"There just isn't the room to put two very large wheelie bins."

Braintree Council said that all local authorities "must start collecting a wider range of recyclable material".

These recycling bins will be collected once a month, while general waste will be picked up from households every three weeks - rather than fortnightly.

Food waste will be collected weekly, a legal requirement across England from 31 March. Households pay to have garden waste collected - as most areas of Essex do - apart from in Rochford, where it is free.

Currently, Braintree residents put recyclable waste in plastic sacks to be collected kerbside every two weeks.

"At the moment we have an excellent service," Thorogood added, but said she and her husband do not need four wheelie bins for the waste they produce and do not have the room for the bins.

She appealed to the council, but received a letter stating "we are confident that your property has sufficient space to accommodate the new receptacles" and that was "a final decision".

Conservative Tom Cunningham, responsible for waste on Braintree Council, was unavailable for an interview.

Some Braintree residents were being offered smaller boxes or could share wheelie bins with neighbours.

The council has said it wants to divert as much waste as possible from landfill, or incineration, and capture more of this for recycling to "support our climate aspiration".

Councils have a target to recycle 65% of household waste by 2035.

Currently 46.9% is recycled in Braintree.

Neighbouring Chelmsford households have six separate bins for waste, where 51.9% is recycled.

Basildon Council has gone the other way.

The Labour-led authority brought back weekly bin collections last year.

A system brought in by the previous Conservative administration split recycling into six separate containers and caused a public backlash. The system replaced one recycling sack.

Now Basildon residents have one general waste wheelie bin and two separate single-use plastic sacks for recycling, as well as a food caddy and garden waste subscription service - collected every week.

"It's excellent," Gillian Blake from Langdon Hills said. "There's nothing better than getting rid of your rubbish."

Ms Blake, chair of the Local Residents' Association, complained about the previous system, describing it as "chaos".

Her housing estate of terraced homes is connected by walkways, making kerbside collections difficult.

Weekly bin collections have been extended for another year by Labour, a move supported by opposition Conservatives.

Basildon recycled 49.8% of its household waste in 2024-25.

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