Residents fed up with missed bin collections say they are being “punished” for the actions of “mavericks” who fail to recycle properly.

Those living in the town centre apartment complex say they are at a loss of what to do to ensure their rubbish is taken away, but accept it is not the waste company’s fault.

When refuse collectors come every other week to empty the seven recycling bins at Bluecoats Yard in Maidstone, they leave any that have black plastic sacks or other non-recyclable materials in them because any contamination blights their whole load.

Last Wednesday, all of them were rejected, and now they are overflowing with rubbish.

Brian Beswick is one of the directors of the residents’ association that manages the apartment complex in Knightrider Street.

He said: “The binmen are not at fault - they are only doing their job. But that doesn’t really help.

“There are 24 flats here and we don’t know who is doing this.”

“We have leafletted each flat and have put notices by the bins warning what cannot go in them, but it is constantly happening.

“I don’t think this is unique to Bluecoats Yard - I believe the same is happening at other locations that have communal bins.

“A single householder contaminating their bin is quite rightly bypassed until the owner cleans up their act.

“But when this action is applied to shared recycling bins it all breaks down. It only takes a few mavericks dumping their unsorted waste in recycling bins and we all are punished by a bypassed collection.”

Mr Beswick said: “We additionally have three commercial-sized bins for general waste and fortunately the binmen who collect them are always very helpful and if we ask them, they will empty the recycling bins into the general waste for us.”

The retired special needs classroom assistant has lived at the complex for 18 months.

He said he had written to Maidstone council’s cabinet member in charge of waste collection,Cllr Clive English (Lib Dem), for advice, asking: “What’s the solution? Should we just abandon recycling collections?”

Cllr English said: “My feeling is that the culprit may not even be someone from the flats.

“We will be discussing this within the council to see if we can think of a way around this.”

Suez Recycling and Recovery UK took over the contract for domestic waste collections from Biffa across three districts - Maidstone, Swale and Ashford - in March.

Since then there have been numerous complaints about missed bin collections and rubbish building up, sometimes for weeks at a time.

In July, a frustrated Swale council decided to impose penalties on the contractor for its poor performance.

However, in recent months, the boroughs have generally observed an improvement in service, at least where standard wheelie bins collections are concerned, though there are still sometimes problems reported with communal bins.

Last week, residents at Hayle Mill in Tovil, who also share bins, pointed out that they had no recycling containers whatsoever.

Maidstone’s recycling rate is above the national average at nearly 53%.

However, last August the borough council revealed the costs of recycling contamination had topped £25,000 in the previous 12 months.

Dirty nappies, black sacks and plastic bags are the most common items incorrectly placed in recycling bins.