FAMILIES who are growing frustrated because of green bins overflowing too quickly may be granted some relief with a new collection timetable due to be trialled around June next year.

Currently, two-thirds of green bins are full or overflowing by the time they are picked up once every four weeks, causing a nuisance for many West Fife families.

Fife Council have been looking at alternative schedules and if proposals are agreed, a new and improved timetable could be rolled out as a trial by the summer.

Leader of the Conservative group on Fife Council, Dave Dempsey, is pleased that something is being done about the problem. “We hear from plenty of people that they can’t get all of the plastic into the bin, so the council has been looking to see if it can work out a different frequency,” he said.

“The four-bin system works well and has raised recycling to unprecedented levels but people are having to jump up and down on plastic to try to make it fit in the bins, so if we could find a solution to empty them a little more frequently it would be simpler.

“The council were looking at it and we’ve invited them to look at it more urgently. We’re also looking at room for improvement from central government and manufacturers cutting down on unnecessary packaging.” Roddy Mann, senior manager of environmental operations, said, “We carried out a review of our four-bin household collection service which revealed that 66 per cent of green bins are full or overflowing by the time they’re collected.

“Clearly, we need to collect green bins more often and will be submitting a report to the Environment and Transportation Advisory Group by December. This will lay out proposals to collect the green bins more frequently. We’ll then take the report to the executive committee early next year. “Providing the proposals are agreed, we’d be looking to trial a new collection timetable for the green bins around June 2015.

"We’ll use the results of the trial to decide whether we should permanently change the bin collection timetable.”