“ My concern is that we have gone from a good system which produced high quality recyclates with low contamination and high resale value to a system which produces lower quality recyclates with much lower value, needs to be sent to a specialist (and expensive) separation plant, may end up being incinerated(due to contamination) and may be in breach of regulations that come into force in 2015. To date the council have spent £3.7 million on the supply and distribution of the blue and brown bins, £150,000 on advertising and around £75,000 on people who will be knocking on doors to encourage people to recycle more. Barnet's argument is that moving to a single (co-mingled) collection will make it easier for people to recycle and that will mean that less material will go to landfill. Barnet's recycling levels are at the average level for London and one of the potential reasons for not having higher recycling rates is the high proportion of flats we have in Barnet (43%). It strikes me that the blue bins are exactly the wrong approach for flats especially when each flat gets a blue brown and brown bin. If the money used for advertising and door knockers had been done with the old system (but with better boxes) and a different approach was developed for flats we could have increase recycling rates, been noncompliance with the new regulations and saved £3.7million. ”