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Three Weekly Bin Collections – Update
by prestwichfocus on 15 July, 2014
As people will be aware from the media Bury Council has announced that it intends to become the ONLY council in the country to undertake three-weekly collections of the the ‘normal’ grey bins.
The change would also meant that our green and blue bins move to three weekly (currently they are every four weeks). Brown bins and food ‘caddys’ would stay at 2 weekly. Some flats would stay at two-weekly collections for grey bins as 3 weekly is apparently impractical. The change would take place in October this year.
Background
Just so people know the announcement came as much as a surprise to opposition (i.e. non-Labour) councillors as it did to the general public. The first time many councillors found out about this was watching BBC North West last Thursday!
The report should have been published during the day of Wednesday 9 July; its publication was delayed until after newspaper and media deadlines for the following day had passed meaning there was only ‘one side’ of the story on radio, TV and the Bury Times the next day.
I even had to ASK for opposition councillors to be given a briefing note so we could respond to local residents who were contacting us – this finally arrived 5 days after the announcement. There is no consultation with local residents. You will not remember the Labour candidates proposing this before the election six weeks ago (they didn’t mention it in their leaflets…..)
There are two reasons why the Council is proposing to do this:
– increase recycling rates
In Bury at the moment 47.6% of our household waste is recycled. This is already one of the highest levels in Greater Manchester (3rd highest), but the Council believes that this figure can increase to over 60% by 2016.
– save money
All public services are having to save money and local government is no exception. the Council believes it will save £862,000 a year by moving to a three weekly bin collection.
The full report to Cabinet is here.
What will happen now
The decision will be taken by the Council’s Cabinet on Wednesday (16 July 2014). This Committee is made up of six Labour councillors.
There is the potential for this decision to be ‘called in’ for scrutiny which we will support if the decision goes ahead.
Over the weekend Lib Dems in Bury have been consulting with local residents to find out your views on this important issue. We’ve had a brilliant response and will letting people know the outcome before the meeting tomorrow night.
I am really interested to know your views on this subject and we have set up a quick online survey to gather people’s views and ideas on this subject.
Please take a minute to fill in the survey here.
What would we do differently?
Liberal Democrats have always been huge supporters of recycling but we are opposed to three-weekly bin collections.
Every household is different but three weeks is a long time for waste to be left lying in our bins. We all know what a bin can smell like after two weeks in the summer. If you’re away when the bin gets collected then its going to be SIX weeks between bin collections….
Instead we would like to look at other options to increase recycling:
– The Council has been hugely successful in encouraging people to have smaller grey bins (its been free to have a smaller grey bin for a couple of years). For some households – particularly where there is just one or two people – this works really well. What can we do to encourage more people to do this?
– having a slightly smaller grey bin for everyone collected very two weeks would be estimated to save almost the same amount of money (£720,000 a year) – but it would mean the Council having to borrow the buy the bins in the first place BUT some larger households might not be able accommodate all their waste?
– What more could be done to encourage households to recycle more: more education?, some form of incentives? work with our local supermarkets to reduce the amount of packaging that we take home?
– Some Councils have done things to encourage garden composting – some even give people a free composter to reduce the amount of garden (and vegetable) waste that ends up in the brown bins or food caddies (obviously only works if you’ve got a garden!)
There will be other ideas so please let us know your views.
6 Comments
Hi, thanks for this, just a note that the survey link isn’t available or working.
thanks Anthony – should be now!
This is completely ridiculous. Bury Council seem to want its tenants to be fall guys for their crap administration. My gey bin is full to overflow every 2 week, my blue bin also overflows after 2 weeks and the only stuff in there is recyclable.
If this travesty actually gets passed we will see housing estates piled high with rubbish bags and a great increase in rats and other vermin putting both people and pets at risk. We would be the fall guys because they would moot that refuse is tenants responsibility and accuse us of fly tipping if the bags were put with the bins – probably left to rot on the paths.
For me it would be catastrophic – disabled , no car and at present out of work. Oh yes going through job search daily as per JobCentre Plus [ 5 hrs per day 365 days per year or I lose benefit ] other local councils are recruiting for refuse collecters not Bury though.
So my own Council actually appears to want me ill or perhaps dead as I’m sure a rat bite with all that rubbish hanging about would finish me off.
Its time we got a plan together to get rid of waste by burning all of it not dumpimg it in the ground too.
No one wants to make a stand hough so even writing this won’t change a thing
9:24am Fri 11 Jul 14
Bohohan says…
Bring on the 3 weekly collections! I welcome it with open arms as it wouldn’t be a problem with me and it would coax all the non-recyclers into recycling.
I read in the small print that larger families will get a new bin and the requirement has been reduced from 6 to 5 people in a household.
I already have a smaller bin and it is only 3/4 full after 2 weeks so I can even stick with it when the new scheme starts. The grey bin waste (plastic bags, trays, pots, cling film, tissues, NO FOOD) can be easily compressed.
However, there are other aspects of the scheme I am not satisfied about and would like them to know about.
Why on earth is bury not following suit with neighbouring councils with weekly food waste collections?
I continue to use the little black caddy but I know that many other people have given up with them since there was no incentive to use them as they were still collected fortnightly. If they really want to increase participation then rotting food and garden waste must be taken weekly. But first you need to re deliver caddies to those who have lost theirs since it started in 2011.
I also create a lot of garden waste which I have to pile up in the the driveway, waiting for the totally insufficient and infrequent collection to happen and then fill it up again. And for reasons they don’t want to disclose to me, they won’t give me another brown bin.
As for 3 weekly recycling collections, what difference does this make except collecting lighter bins which are less full.
4 weeks is perfect as most bins are just about full, collecting them more often would just waste money. Very few people have extra bottles and paper after 4 weeks, if they do, give them an extra bin.
My blue bin is 1/2 full after 4 weeks and green bin about 3/4.
Keep the 4 weekly recycle collections but PLEASE follow your neighbours and collect food/garden waste from our doorsteps WEEKLY!!!
Only then will people stop putting food into the grey bin.
would the savings get passed on to the tax payer?? of course they won’t…
would the streets be lined with rubbish bags?? of course they would….
would the population of urban foxes and vermin increase?? of course it would….
would council tax start to become an even bigger rip off?? definitely yes…
well done lib dems, failing in local and national government, very well done.
I agree with a comment from bonni above. I have no issue with collections apart from food waste. Rotting food is a health hazard and it stinks, therefore it attracts flies as well as other vermin. The brown bins should be collected every week at least through spring to early winter. Has anyone ever had their brown bin overflowing with maggots because flies got in and laid eggs on food waste, its not a pleasant experience! This is not the fault of local liberal democrats, this is a labour council and by the sound of it they are going to railroad changes through, that is what is not acceptable, so contact your labour councillors and give them an ear bashing, remember they are there for the areas and people they represent, supposedly!