Plans to collect most of Kingston's recyclables fortnightly have been approved despite fierce resistance from many households and councillors.

The new collection rota will begin in January 2016.

Surrey Comet:

One small alteration is bound to win approval: those little green food recycling bags, easy to overfill and difficult to tie up, will now come with handles.

But that small change is unlikely to fully appease opponents of the Conservative plan, voted through last Thursday, to save £4.2m over seven years by cutting back on collections.

Councillor Hilary Gander, Liberal Democrat lead member for the environment, said fewer collections would inconvenience residents and mean more waste going into landfill.

She said: "It's obvious. If you've got a grey bin collection and your other recycling is overflowing, you're just going to chuck everything in the grey bin."

Last year it was revealed half of waste Kingston residents put into landfill bins could have been recycled instead.

But Coun David Cunningham, Conservative lead member for the environment, said: "We know the mechanisms of it work, because I've been out to other boroughs to see it.

"We've got to tailor it to certain areas.

"There will be areas where people need extra boxes [which] we've factored into the costings."

Some savings will come from keeping paper and cardboard dry in wheelie bins, meaning more of it can be sold for recycling rather than dumped in landfill, he added.

He also revealed the health and safety officers were unhappy with how recycling is currently transferred from your front door to rubbish trucks.

Under the new system, bin men will no longer carry each box individually and empty its contents.

Instead they will empty them into a single bin, to be loaded in one go.

Labour group leader Coun Linsey Cottington, who voted with the Conservatives, said: "I feel very strongly that every resident of Kingston has a responsibility to help save our planet.

"They need to do what they can to help the council in terms of recycling.

"The more money that we spend on recycling the less we have to spend on other services."

Ryan Coley, from the Kingston Green Party, said: "What we would like to see is that money reinvested in improving our recycling.

"I know that some flats in the borough don't have recycling available to them, and that needs to change."

Coun Cunningham also denied claims by MP Edward Davey that no consultation on the changes had taken place.

About 800 people were contacted by phone for a survey conducted by a consultation agency, he said.

He added: “We’ve not just gone out and decided willy-nilly what we’re going to do. It was based on detailed research."

The survey by QA Research, which cost just under £24,000, found that "overall, respondents were generally unsupportive of the proposed changes to the recycling collection that would see a fortnightly collection on alternate weeks."

A specific concern was waste build-up over the fortnight, the firm said, but it added there was "by no means an overwhelming rejection" of the plans.

Coun Cunningham said he will spend the next year explaining to residents how the plan will work.