Hounslow Council chiefs have been forced to offer a grovelling apology to furious residents after the introduction of their much-lauded recycling scheme descended into farce this month.
More than 3,500 angry calls poured into the Civic Centre's complaints lines as 'teething problems' continued to plague the new system into its third week.
Green-minded Chiswick residents were among the worst hit, Hounslow Council has admitted, because their enthusiasm for the scheme left new waste contractors SITA completely overwhelmed.
At the other end of the borough hundreds of Hanworth residents were left with uncollected rubbish after calendars with the wrong collection dates were delivered to several streets.
Since the scheme was launched, complaints have flooded into the Chronicle office.
Keen recycler Graham Holding, of Portland Crescent, Feltham, said: "We didn't even receive our different bags until this week and we still don't know which day they'll actually collect. I'm really disappointed. It's just not good enough."
Leslie Robinson, of Hogarth Gardens, Heston, added: "Our plastics and food waste still haven't been collected. We have to move them every time we bring the car in and out and the street is starting to look very untidy. It's becoming a bit of a farce."
The new service, which has been extended to include plastics, garden and food waste, was intended to increase the proportion of Hounslow's domestic waste which is recycled to 70 per cent.
But instead thousands of residents across the borough were left with bags of uncollected refuse, mixed messages and little response to their repeated complaints.
In an effort to calm the mounting tension, environment chief Barbara Reid spoke out to apologise for the 'unacceptable performance' of waste management company SITA.
She said: "We've had a significant number of complaints about failures in the system and although some teething problems are to be expected the level of disruption has been unacceptable.
"I want to reassure residents that the situation will improve and it will improve quickly. We are working on an hourly basis with SITA and fully intend to start looking at the default measures in our contract if the service is not significantly better this week."
Early problems with the scheme have led the Labour opposition to accuse the Tory administration of letting residents down and to raise concerns that some people may be permanently discouraged from taking part.
"The number of complaints has rocketed and this means that people will be put off recycling. This is terrible news for the environment, and will cost our council tax payers money as more waste goes to landfill," said Cllr Ruth Cadbury.
But on Monday, Cllr Reid insisted there was still 'an enormous amount of enthusiasm and goodwill' among residents and that the problems would soon be resolved.
James Farquhar, senior contract manager for SITA UK, said: "We have had some teething problems since we introduced new recycling services in Hounslow.
"We are sorry for the inconvenience caused and we would like to reassure residents that we are working hard to resolve these issues as quickly as possible."
