Bin Day

Our local Council, Falkirk, have announced that they are going to reduce our non-recyclable bin collections from a 2 weekly to 3 weekly cycle. Some people are up in arms about this. Others, myself included, are rather shrugging and wondering what all the fuss is about. Apparently our locality is going to be the pilot area but so far I haven’t seen the collection calendar which is meant to start from this May – so they had better get their act together.

Falkirk’s waste and recycling collection is actually pretty good. We have a blue bin for paper, metal and most types of plastic which is collected fortnightly; a food waste bin (possibly better described as “kitchen waste”) which is collected every week; a brown garden waste bin which is collected fortnightly from March through to November; and a black box which is for small electrical items, glass bottles and jars which is collected fortnightly (although I usually just drop any bottles off at the bottle-bank at the end of the road). There is also meant to be a fabrics collection but I tend to drop any old clothes off with the Strathcarron Hospice shop or in the Salvation Army collection bins.

The end result of this is that our green “landfill” collection bin doesn’t get very full – typically only a quarter full per fortnight. I can see how individual circumstances may affect this. For example, anyone using disposable nappies will know that these take up quite a bit of space and emptying a cat’s litter tray will fill the bin up as well. There are various other circumstances which will lead to household producing a large amount of waste and large green bins are available for anyone whose circumstances differ but the council suspects that the majority of those who overfill their green bins are simply too lazy or too stupid to dispose of waste correctly.

The switch to 3 weekly collections is dressed up as an environmental policy but the real reason is actually financial. Cutting collections down to 3 weeks will reduce the number of crews dedicated to collecting these bins and, more importantly, they are currently paying out an estimated £2.5 million extra annually in landfill tax which is quite a staggering amount simply to throw otherwise reclaimable materials into the ground. Judging from the figures posted outside what most people still call “the rubbish tip” they are managing to reclaim 80% of all materials and this figure has been steadily increasing for some time so it is not unreasonable to think that the household waste recycling figure could increase from its current level of around 55%.

I’m curious to see how the pilot goes. For the most part people just get on with these things and as long as the information is coherently communicated and the facilities are provided everything should go smoothly. Some people will no doubt be too stupid or too lazy to get things sorted and will presumably be a right royal pain in the backside as they are at the moment. However, if there is one element that I think will cause problems it is the frequency of collections. At the moment, the recycling bins are collected one week and the landfill the next. With a 3 weekly collection it will mean that the landfill collection will be collected either on its own or in the same week as the recycling bins. Without constantly looking at the calendars it’s quite difficult to remember what is going out and when. Out of sheer simplicity it would make more sense to have 4 weekly bin collections. It’s probably only a matter of time until we do.