A Merton woman has started a campaign to protest the rolling out of wheelie bins across the borough.

Nell Allen, from Raynes Park, has set up the ‘No Wheelies Please’ campaign and is championing an 80 litre lidded recycling bin for use alongside dustbins already used across the borough. She found the images of the bins online.

She says these alternative bins are cheaper as wheelie bins retail at £40, and these at £20. They are also a more attractive option to the standard wheelie bins and open topped boxes used throughout the country. The brown bins would be made with “embossed lids so that there’d be no need for ugly, bright coloured lids or stickers to establish the contents of each.”

She also says the current open top recycling boxes, which will contain a household’s glass, plastics and cans for two weeks, are an eyesore.

Veolia Waste Management took over waste collections at the beginning this month under an outsourcing agreement under the South West London Waste Partnership, a joint initiative between Merton, Sutton, Croydon and Kingston councils.

Sutton, Croydon and Kingston Councils have all now changed to fortnightly waste collections. Merton is due to follow in October 2018.

Your Local Guardian: The offending wheelie bins (left) versus the campaign's proposal (right)

Ms Allen has started a petition and hopes to gather a thousand signatures to put forward to the council.

In material produced for the campaign, she says: "Let's talk dirty - Merton propose to continue collecting food waste weekly, because of the smell and health risks, but seem willing to ignore the fact that dustbin waste is considerably more revolting."

The campaign argue that proposed fortnightly collections from wheelie bins and open topped boxes should be reconsidered as they are a “stinking health hazard”. She says the bins produce methane in hot weather, and attract flies, rats and foxes.

She said: “The problem that the Council is trying to solve, lies not in the tidy streets where dustbins are the receptacle of choice for household waste but outside those households where unbinned, plastic sacks are routinely ripped open by urban wildlife.”

Serious concerns over the wheelie bins and the proposed fortnightly collections were raised in a meeting at Merton Council last summer, where members of the opposition, the public and representatives from local groups accused the council of not considering the difficulties for elderly and disabled residents, and failing to uphold their manifesto commitment to maintain weekly rubbish collections.

The petition currently has over 350 signatures.

You can find out more about the campaign at nowheeliesplease-merton.org.uk

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