Tag: clean

Given how bad a mess the council has been making of the the changes to its waste and recycling service, it is, perhaps, not surprising that they have received a one star rating for them in an Audit Commission report on Swindon’s waste management services. The report notes the dissatisfaction of residents.

The waste collection service is variable with different parts of the Borough receiving different services and there are low levels of residents’ satisfaction with recycling and waste collection.

Just how low is only apparent from page 16 of the full report.

Satisfaction with both the waste collection and waste disposal service in 2005/06 was poor and in the worst 25 per cent of national performance with 74 per cent of residents’ satisfied with the waste collection service and 72 per cent of residents’ satisfied with the waste disposal service.

That’s over a quarter of the population dissatisfied with a service that most people ordinarily take for granted. The Commission also confirms my own experience.

The free garden waste collections service is also variable with some residents not having received a regular or reliable service.

The commission recommends that the council sets targets for improving residents’ level of satisfaction with the service. The council’s response, from our old friend, Mr Wren? Complacent.

I am delighted that the Audit Commission has recognised the council’s commitment and enthusiasm to continue to improve our waste services and increase the level of recycling and composting that our residents help us to achieve. If they were to come back this time next year, I think they would be totally impressed.

Perhaps they should first try to impress their local residents.

Swindon Borough Council has now published a list of which streets will not have to use wheelie bins and will instead have fortnightly blue bag collections. There’s several things that are irritating about this. Looking at the list, it’s mainly of roads where the houses front straight onto the pavement. But streets such as The Mall, Faringdon Road and Park Lane, where the houses all have reasonably sized front gardens and the roads are level, are also reprieved, whereas the many terraces with a mere 3 ft front yard (Tennyson Street, for example) will receive wheelie bins, despite the difficulties of manœuvring them in such a confined space. This is inconsistent with both the council’s published basis of assessment of wheelie-suitability and that the slightly more generous criteria that councillors were told. Not surprisingly some people in Broadgreen are not impressed. According to the council’s director of environment and health

The survey was done by an expert refuse driver who walked the streets around the town assessing the road and properties to see which would be suitable. It has been done by someone who knows how the system works and understands the service and its needs.

He seems to be forgetting something. Services are there to serve the people and it is the people’s needs that are being forgotten. Also Councillor Wren is back spouting, appropriately for his council responsibilities, utter rubbish.

We mustn’t lose sight of the two key reasons why we’re making these changes. Firstly, we have to reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill, otherwise each and every one of us will be hit in the pocket. And secondly, it’s damaging to the environment to bury re-usable materials.

All of which is totally irrelevant to the issue of blue bag versus wheelie bin.

It’s not all sweetness and light for those receiving blue bags either. The blue bags will be twice the size of ordinary black refuse sacks. That’ll make them easy to carry when full!

I see that whilst I have been away, quite a fight has broken out over waste and recycling collections in central Swindon.

Now that a quango has changed its guidance on alternate weekly collections, particularly in relation to food waste, Councillor Montaut has written an open letter to Mr Wren, the councillor in charge of waste and recycling, questioning the decision to collect ‘non-recyclable’ waste once per fortnight, and has then gone on to play petty politics with the issue. It is also worth noting that Mr Montaut is rather selecive in which parts of said quango’s guidance he chooses to take note of, with some of his points (e.g. about the effect of fortnightly collections on recycling rates) totally contradicting the same guidance document that he quotes elsewhere.

What Mr Montaut hasn’t questioned are the rules about who does and who does not get a wheelie bin, which seem to have been applied differently in the vicinity of the council leader’s home than the rest of central Swindon. But then, frequency of collection is, to some extent, an issue for all of Swindon, whereas the problem of where to put a wheelie bin is only an issue in the cramped terraces of central Swindon, so, as he lives in Moredon (oddly enough the ward of Councillor Wren), Mr Montaut is not personally affected.

(I note in passing that, according to the August edition of Swindon News, the start date for fortnightly wheelie bin collections has been put back from September to November, though they will be introduced over just two weeks from 5th November rather than over six months as originally advertised.)

’Twas the first day of the new recycling regime in this part of Swindon today. As I walked to work this morning, the clear plastic bags for plastic bottles that had been put out for collection were very revealing in two respects. Firstly, the large number of people that put bags out filled with a relatively small number of unsquashed bottles, despite the council’s advice and the cost of the bags. Secondly, being a person who is quite content to drink tap water, the number of water bottles in many of the sacks was a surprise. Some households clearly spend more on bottled water than I spend on food. A masterpiece of marketing over common-sense.

As I cannot find them elsewhere on the internet, here are the rules for who won’t get a Swindon Borough Council wheelie bin, taken from an article in Central Outlook by the Western Ward councillors.

A wheelie bin will provided for each household except if:

1. the wheelie bin would need to be manœuvred up or down a number of steps;
2. there is no storage space available for the bin without it being taken through a dwelling;
3. the property is a flat where there is no suitable storage area for a wheelie bin;
4. the front garden of the dwelling is too small to accommodate a wheelie bin and there is no alternative access;
5. the visual appearance of the bin would detract from the street scene (in conservation areas and designated town gateways only);
6. there is not a safe location where the bin can be left for collection because of steeply sloping street or other reason;
7. on-road parking or other reasons would result in wheelie bin collection being an unacceptable obstruction to the highway.

Exactly how many steps they mean by ‘a number’ is not stated. This and the ‘other reasons’ will be determined by the men from the council.

The Great Western 2 for 1 pub at Shaw Ridge may have closed, its owners (who have since been taken over) fined and its senior managers sacked, but it’s of little interest to me. Unless you always go out with an even number of people in your party, the main selling point of ‘2 for 1’ seems decidedly weak… much like the flavour of the food this chain of pubs serves.

After two months and three ’phone calls the council have finally collected the two green bags of garden waste I put out for collection. Reasons for non-collection explored during the ’phone calls included the bags not being green enough (tho’ they are clearly sufficiently green for the dustmen doing the non-recyclables collection to leave them behind) and that perhaps they were not visible from the road. (There’s a wall between my front forecourt and the road; council instructions are not to put bags in the road or on the pavement. So what do they want me to do, build a wall-high pedestal to put my green bags on?) Lets hope they’re rather more efficient when the full programme of recycling starts in September.

I see that Toby Sturgis, cabinet member for planning and waste on Wiltshire County Council has a rather poor understanding (i.e. virtually none) of the science on which some of the decisions within his remit are should be made. On the council’s trial of food digesting bins, he is reported to have said

It’s not sustainable to keep on burying this rubbish in the ground. It is expensive and it produces green house gases

Err… so what do these food digesting bins produce? To quote from the Wiltshire Waste Partnership’s website, describing one of the two designs of food digesting bin being offered.

The patented design ensures the total breakdown of all food waste into its natural components of water and carbon dioxide, thus producing minimal residue.

Ah, good old CO2, one of the main green house gases.

Whilst I’m in favour of recycling of scarce resources or where it is the most energy efficient option, Swindon Borough Council’s requirements for it’s new recycling scheme are irksome. I’ll have so many receptacles for different types of waste in my house, there’ll be little space for much else. From July, there will be two orange boxes for paper, glass, metal and textiles recycling; clear bags for plastic bottles (but we’ll have to pay for these, to encourage us only to put them out for collection when full); green bags for garden waste; and a dark grey wheelie bin for anything else that the council won’t recycle.

Then there are the special conditions. The lids of the wheelie bins must be completely shut. I can see the intention: this, along with not collecting any over-spill waste that is not in the bins, is intended to persuade people to recycle more. But I can also foresee yobs walking down a street randomly opening wheelie bin lids, just for the ‘fun’ of seeing them being left unemptied. There’s also the minor matter of what to do if your wheelie bin goes absent with out leave. The council will provide a replacement, but only if you report it’s absence to the police. With that much hassle, you might feel inclined to buy your own replacement instead. Well, you can, but the council will not empty it.

Oh well, at least I now know what a plastic bottle is.

I’m not particularly interested in the arguments over weekly vs fortnightly non-recyclable rubbish collections, nor convinced either way on the arguments. However, I am worried about the sanity of one of our local councillors, if he actually said what he’s reported to have said.

Mr Wren said that new wheelie bins being rolled out across Swindon in September will be airtight so smells cannot escape and animals cannot get in.

Airtight? If no smells could escape, then as waste rots and decomposes, the gas that’s given off would have nowhere to go. The bins would build up a little bit of pressure. Leave them long enough and they might explode (and before anyone accuses me of being alarmist, we’re talking little ‘pop’ type explosions here, not big bangs). It would certainly make the dustmen’s job exciting.