'So much for saving the planet' say residents as THREE different bin lorries collect each households rubbish today in Milton Keynes

As the first day of the new wheelie bin system dawned today (Monday) in Milton Keynes, residents are questioning why three different lorries are need to collect the bins from each household.

And some have criticised the council for wasting energy when a major point of the new scheme was to increase recycling and cut the city’s carbon footprint.

People whose collection day is today have taken to social media to comment on the activity outside their houses with three different lorries arriving at three different times, each one collecting just one bin.

"So much for saving the planet….Surely it would be better to use just one vehicle per household?” said one resident.

Another said: “It’s been like Clapham Junction in our street today. I never expected three different lorries. That’s a lot of diesel.”

The new system is run by brand new contractors SUEZ recycling and recovery UK instead of Serco, who have been collecting MK waste for the past 15 years. Some of the workers are new but many of the ex-Serco crew members have been retained.

Unlike the old system, where lorries had two compartments, one for general black sack waste and one for recycling, the new lorries are more specialist.

One lorry takes the waste from the black bins, one from the green bins and a third lorry takes the red or blue bin recycling.

The council has invested in 129 new state-of-the-art vehicles for SUEZ. Currently only four of them are electric but over time the fleet will become almost entirely electric, says the council. It is not known how long this will take.

All the vehicles have 360-degree cameras on board to improve safety and record any issues, as well as electric bin lifts to cut fuel consumption and emissions.

Council leader Pete Marland explained that the use of separate lorries means waste isn’t “co-mingled” so it reduces contamination, helping to save time and increase recycling in the long run.

He pointed out that there were actually three different vehicles used under the old system – one for green bins, once for black sacks and recycling, and one for glass.

A spokesperson for Milton Keynes City Council said: “We’ve taken the opportunity to modernise the waste contract and move to what the majority of other councils do, which is to collect recycling separately from ‘black bin/sack’ waste. This helps to prevent contamination so more of MK’s rubbish can be recycled.

“We’ve shared this in communications with local people but grateful for anything you can do to reiterate the message that different types of rubbish will be picked up at different times on the same day.

“Our new vehicles have lower emissions than the old ‘joint rubbish and recycling’ waste trucks. Four of the new vehicles are electric and as vehicles we’ve ordered become available we’ll be moving to an almost fully electric zero emission fleet that will be powered by MK’s own rubbish.”