£145k will be spent promoting recycling
Wolverhampton City Council is to spend £145,000 telling people to recycle, it emerged today.
Wolverhampton City Council is to spend £145,000 telling people to recycle, it emerged today.
The outlay, almost double what was spent last year, includes promoting "in a positive way" reduced opening hours at two city tips.
Bosses said cutting the number of days the two tips are open from April will save £100,000 over two years. An extra £70,000 for this year's communications budget will also be spent on quarterly promotions for residents' leaflets with pictorial messages that can be easily understood.
There will also be further use of an exhibition unit, pop-up displays and translation of leaflets into other languages.
The council believes it can save on landfill tax, which sees it pay out £50 for every ton of waste it does not recycle. Last year the council spent £75,000 promoting recycling.
Environment chief Councillor Barry Findlay said the extra money would be found in the existing budgets and would not cost taxpayers any more. He said: "It is very important that we communicate the recycling message to people.
"We have to get our recycling rates up to 50 per cent and we have reconfigured the service to allow us to increase the budget for communication. Landfill tax costs a lot, far more than we would spend on this."
From April tips at Anchor Lane in Coseley and Shaw Road in Bushbury will be open for five days a week instead of seven, and open up at 10am each day rather than 8am under the controversial move by Wolverhampton City Council to save £100,000 by 2012.
Councillor Andrew Johnson, Labour's finance spokesman, said: "It's quite perverse that they want to spend money telling people it was a good idea to reduce the opening hours.
"It's going to mean more flytipping so the cost will actually be more as a result."
At Anchor Lane, opening hours for six months of the year are currently 8am to 8pm on weekdays and 8am-4.30pm on weekends, but the authority wants to reduce it to 10am-8pm from Monday to Friday and 10-4.30pm on Saturday and Sunday.
For the six winter months from March to October, the site will operate from 10am until 6pm during the week, instead of 8am to 6pm now, and again open from 10-4.30pm on weekends.
