QUESTIONS have been raised about what happens after plastics bottles and tubs are dropped into black boxes and whisked away from outside people’s homes once a fortnight across Wiltshire.

Bradford on Avon town council has written to leader of Wiltshire Council Phillip Whitehead calling for more clarity on how much from kerbside collections is actually recycled and kept away from the landfill.

Between April and December last year some of the county’s plastic bottles were sent to a facility in Changua, Taiwan to be processed into pellets used in manufacturing.

However since December 2018, no plastics from Wiltshire have been exported outside the European Union before it has gone through an Environment Agency approved process.

Writing to Wiltshire Council, Cllr Alex Kay chair of the environmental and planning committee, at Bradford on Avon town council said: “It is difficult to get a true picture of the situation. Some sources suggest that almost all, of our recycled plastic ends up in the ocean and we may be better off putting it into the general waste bins for landfill.”

Wiltshire Council say that 43.7 per cent of household waste was recycled last year.

Bridget Wayman, cabinet member for waste said: “We have invested heavily in providing residents with more opportunities to easily recycle many types of household waste, including a wider range of plastics, and this is having a positive impact. Since we introduced cartons to the kerbside recycling service we have also collected over five million of these. We also keep a complete audit trail of where all materials collected are recycled and produce an annual report.”

“The use of the black box system in Wiltshire has ensured that high quality materials are collected for recycling but we are always looking for new ways to ensure people can easily recycle. This includes moving to a new co-mingled kerbside collection in due course which will make it even easier for Wiltshire residents to recycle.”

Some people also took to social media to raise concerns about where their waste ends up and called on supermarkets to do more to reduce how much plastic is used in packaging in the first place.

Ian Diddams added: “Halting waste at source has to become the norm.. Recycling should be seen as the final part.”

This year, 5,600 tonnes of plastic has beens collected, of which 4,000 tonnes came from kerbside collections.

Wiltshire Council figures show that 3,764‬ tonnes of plastic recycled by Wiltshire residents was sorted, graded and granulated or shredded in the year 2017-2018

Besides plastic, 11.8 tonnes of glass was recycled into new bottles and jars and the year before 11,156 tonnes of paper was recycled to make newspapers like the Gazette and Herald.

In 2016 Hills Waste Solutions, which operate recycling centres on behalf of Wiltshire Council across the county, celebrated a landmark two million tonnes of Wiltshire’s waste from land fills to be reused, recycled or turned into energy.