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Residents report maggots in bins due to unusually warm British summer





Resident of Green Lane, Newbury, Yunan Lin, aged 28, said she had founds maggots in her bin on more than one occasion and said she wanted to see weekly refuse and recycling collections reinstated.
“There have been hundreds of maggots,” she said. “I don’t know if they [West Berkshire Council] are going to do anything.
“They collect the rubbish every two weeks which is not enough.
“We do recycle [but] if we put the food in the rubbish [bin] we will see the maggots coming out.”
A spokesman for the council, Keith Ulyatt, said “very few complaints” about maggots in bins had been received, but that the unusually warm summer weather could be one possible cause.
However, he said the council would not consider reverting back to the weekly collection system during the summer months.
He said: “We still had reports of maggots in warm weather when we had weekly collections; we are not considering changing the system.
“Although we encourage residents to recycle as much food waste as possible, during warm weather if maggots are a problem residents have the option of putting food waste in both their green and black bin, so receiving a weekly collection for the waste which particularly attracts the flies.”
Not all residents felt that a return to more regular collections was necessary.
Naomi Slade, aged 41 and resident of Gloucester Road, Newbury, said: “I haven’t had a problem, however I imagine it has an awful lot to do with the contents of the bins and it’s going to be exacerbated clearly by throwing away moist products [like] kitchen waste and garden waste.
“If you recycle enough and compost enough you don’t really have a problem.
“I have got a household of six and I don’t have a problem at all - I haven’t had maggots, I haven’t had an overflowing bin.”
The council provided advice to residents on how to help reduce the problem, including by using compostable liners and tying the bag before putting it in the bin, however some of the residents affected said they had done so but this failed to eradicate the problem.
Other advice offered by the council was to layer food and green waste to ensure food waste is not at the top of the bin and storing bins out of direct sunlight.



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