I WOULD like to draw your readers' attention to my recent experience with the Tavistock Waste Recycling service at Crowndale. For several consecutive waste collection Thursdays we were unable to put out our black sacks for collection due to visits away from home.
With the pile of sacks increasing inexorably and in the knowledge that we had another set of visitors with whom we were about to be away again on the next waste collection Thursday I thought it was opportune to put the sacks in the back of the car and drop them off at Tavistock tip.
Imagine our embarrassment and horror to learn from the elderly gentleman who works there that we couldn't leave household waste, that there could be a £5,000 fine for leaving household waste and that we must stuff our sacks back into the car and leave forthwith.
My immediate reaction was consternation, since this was the one place that I thought I could leave my rubbish since this was the tip, and although I knew there had been changes recently with rubble and similar items, household rubbish was what the tip was all about.
Since this episode I have discovered from the internet that we are in fact entitled to leave nine bags of household waste per annum at the tip as long as it is booked in. This was not the case the day we arrived, no mechanism for waste disposal was recognised, even though as everyone knows the dustcarts are emptied here at the site.
I could go on, but won't, it is just a bit of a shock to learn that we have now reached a stage in society when we can't leave rubbish at the tip. Even more so, when there is an increased level of fly tipping which has to be paid for out of our ever increasing council tax.
John Miller
Clearbrook