A transitory problem?

The failings in the publicity for Swindon Borough Council’s new fortnightly waste collections are now getting some news media coverage, from both the BBC and the Adver. The tone of both, though, is that this is just a temporary problem, that once people realise their waste will only be collected once a fortnight, the problem will go away. I don’t believe that. In streets with wheelie bins, some have a long way to go to bring their waste down to the one-wheelie-load per fortnight limit. It’s the same in blue bag streets, where many houses have put out several blue bags (I counted five outside one house in Westcott Place this morning), rather than just two as prescribed by the council.

The council say they’ll collect black bags for just one more week (this one). Unless there’s a big education effort on increasing recycling and reducing waste, it looks as though the streets of Swindon are going to be foul with uncollected waste for many weeks or months to come.