Slop bucket plans to cost £2m for new lorries

More than £2 million is to be spent replacing Wolverhampton's bin lorries so they can collect food scraps from household slop buckets.

Council bosses are replacing all 19 lorries with ones that have separate compartments for food and normal waste when the fleet is due for replacement next year.

A further £1m is to be spent replacing the eight other lorries that come round every two weeks to collect paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and cans. The move has been met with criticism.

Today there was condemnation over spending so much taxpayers' money before checking food recycling was what residents wanted.

Labour councillors warned of the same problems when the Tories and Lib Dems introduced white bags for cardboard and plastic recycling in 2008.

The flimsy bags have been blowing away at a rate of up to 500 a month.

The new bin lorries are part of a move to give all 99,845 homes in Wolverhampton slop buckets from January next year.

Wolverhampton City Council wants to boost its recycling rates by giving people a 25-litre bucket to keep outside and a smaller one for their kitchens.

Homes will be issued with bio-degradable bags to put the buckets in.

The bags can then be transferred into the larger outdoor buckets.

The slop buckets, or food 'caddies', are being paid for with £998,450 from the government-funded Waste and Recycling Action Programme.

Food scraps will be taken to Gnosall-based Lower Reule Bioenergy for processing using a system called anaerobic digestion.

Councillor Barry Findlay, Tory cabinet member for the environment, said today: "It is standard practice to replace freighters on a seven-year cycle.

But Labour leader Councillor Roger Lawrence argued: "It is foolish to spend so much money on a major investment like this without checking what the take up is going to be.

"If only 20 per cent of people use these slop buckets it will be a waste."