What was decided at ‘emergency meeting’ on Denbighshire waste system

This decision arose out of a remote “emergency meeting” held among councillors on June 13 regarding the system, which was first introduced on June 3.

Denbighshire County Council has introduced changes to recycling and waste collections, including new containers and weekly collections for recyclable materials.

The new service, which involves the scrapping of the blue wheelie bin, has encountered problems in its first two weeks, though, with some residents not having their rubbish collected on time, if at all.

One resident's overflowing bin (Image: Submitted)

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A council spokesperson said: “A link officer has been established for each of the ‘member area groups’ that cover the county.

“This is for councillors to use as a contact for channelling any reports of missed collections.”

One councillor who attended the meeting on June 13 said they left it feeling “slightly” more positive about the situation.

“Each region has been allocated an ‘officer’, which has helped a bit,” the councillor said.

“The officer is a dedicated council employee dealing with issues and complaints from each ‘micro-region’, so that one person isn’t trying to deal with the whole county, at least.

“There will be more of a focus on answering general enquiries, so that waiting times aren’t as long.

“Unfortunately, there are still some areas which haven’t been collected at all since the inception of the scheme.”

The council says the new system will save money and be more environmentally friendly (Image: Submitted)

Residents are now required to separate their “dry” recycling using a three-tier “Trolibocs” service.

There is also a free new weekly collection services for small electrical items, household batteries and textiles.

Last week, though, confusion continued to arise among residents about bins not being collected; the council has also apologised for the missed collections.

The councillor added: “The priority is the people who haven’t had their bins collected at all. Residents have been amazingly patient and understanding, but there’s a limit on how long that will last.

The new three-tier Trolibocs system (Image: Denbighshire County Council)

“There have been some fundamental, major problems in various aspects of this scheme, and there is going have to be a thorough review of what’s gone wrong.

“But this isn’t a time for pointing fingers; this is a time for getting together and sorting it all out.

“The binmen have been under tremendous pressure, working far harder than they should do. There’s no blame at all attached to them in all of this.

“Vehicle issues and the lack of personnel, I think, are the two biggest problems we’ve had.”