THE NUMBER of calls to a hotline dealing with new recycling arrangements in West Devon, which reached a peak of 265 in a day recently, is reducing, borough councils officers said this week.

There are now an average of 70 calls a day to the recycling hotline and last Friday the council received only 35 calls.

Head of West Devon borough council's environmental services Helen Dobby denied reports that the system cannot cope with the amount of recycling and said early teething problems, which accounted for missed or late collections, were now being addressed.

Recycling rounds have been increased to every week including food waste collections to all parts of the borough and residual waste is now picked up every other week.

Early indications show, with the high response rate, that West Devon is recycling at least 10% more waste than before and the percentage of household rubbish being recycled will rise to beyond 60%.

Three times as much food waste is being recycled since the new system was introduced just over two months ago and the amount of rubbish going to landfill has reduced by around 40% — a figure the borough council is particularly pleased with.

'On the hottest hotline day we received 265 calls but that was when we were distributing new containers in the south end of the borough and in the first two weeks of our new collections in the north end of the borough,' said Mrs Dobby. 'On an average day we receive 50 calls on the waste service and 50% of those are questions about what can be put in the box — it's clarification really, not complaints.

'When you are changing a service for 24,000 households, 265 calls in one day is not bad when some Devon authorities had thousands of calls.'

She added that some residents were complaining that the rounds were taking longer but that was because the number of items that could be recycled had increased and crews were learning new operations.

'We have had a few teething problems,' she said. 'Some of the collection rounds are particularly heavy — for example Tavistock on a Tuesday and Okehampton on a Wednesday but these rounds are being redesigned and rebalanced in the New Year. Householders will be informed of any changes by letter.'

There are also hopes that more plastic items can be recycled over the next seven years of the contract with FOCSA Services UK Ltd but this will depend on finding a good outlet for selling on the plastics.

'We are really pleased with the way people are taking to the new recycling service — it is amazing the amount that is being recycled,' said Mrs Dobby.

'There may be some amendments in the new year to balance things out and the only other thing to say is that bad weather can affect the collections. Contractors will only collect if it is safe to do so.'