‘Public not in favour of four-weekly bin collections’
Richard Evans Local Democracy Reporter
A council needs to do more to address overflowing bins and fly-tipping, according to a concerned councillor critical of a report hailing the success of four-weekly bin collections
The matter was debated at a Conwy Council cabinet meeting this week at Bodlondeb, during a discussion on the council’s performance and self-assessment.
Cabinet member for audit, policy, and performance Cllr Chris Cater introduced the report, which identified where the authority could improve and where it was succeeding.
Cllr Cater said the council had reached the benchmark of 70% of waste reused, recycled, or composted, meeting national targets.
Pride
The Penrhyn Bay councillor was speaking about the success of Conwy’s four-weekly bin collection scheme, which was introduced back in 2018.
His comments follow wide-spread media reports on neighbouring authority Denbighshire and its botched recycling roll-out.
“There has been a lot in the press recently about bin collections, four-weekly bin collections, and residual waste collection,” said Cllr Cater.
“We know we’ve successfully done this for years, and our recycling rate remains at a very high 70%, so I think we can be very proud of that.”
But backbencher Cllr David Carr rubbished his claims around recycling and the success of four-weekly bin collections, arguing the public was against it.
Cllr Carr said: “On the bins, I’ve been out today prior to this meeting, dealing with overflowing bins yet again and fly-tipping, particularly in older people’s bin stores.
“We are getting a lot of fly-tipping. It’s a real problem, and I think we need to get that addressed. Really, a lot of people are not in favour of four-weekly bin collections and never were, so it might be successful in Chris’ ward (Cllr Cater’s), but it’s not successful here in Old Colwyn.”
He added: “There is a lot of good news in Chris’ report, but I think we need to be mindful there are a lot of areas we do need to work on.”
“Some issues”
Chairing the meeting, leader Cllr Charlie McCoubrey then said the whole point of the report was to show areas where the council was doing well and highlight others where there were issues.
“Certainly, within my ward and Pensarn, there are some issues with communal flats with refuse that we are aware of,” he said.
“Our ERF (refuse) team did an amazing job of going in there on a really frequent basis and cleaning that up.”
Cabinet member for bins Geoff Stewart said the four-weekly collections was the result of the authority successfully recycling 70% of its waste.
He added: “If we weren’t doing that, we would be having weekly bin collections. If anyone does have an additional requirement for an additional bin, I would advocate that they need to be examining what they are putting in their bin. The purpose being, we want to get up to 80%.”
Cllr Chris Cater proposed cabinet members backed the report. His proposal was seconded by Cllr Charlie McCoubrey, and the vote was unanimous.
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What will the employees on the bin round be doing for the other three weeks?
‘… wide-spread media reports on neighbouring authority Denbighshire and its botched recycling roll-out.’
I can’t speak for how things are working out in Conwy, nor indeed for other parts of Denbighshire where I don’t live!
But in the bit of that latter county in which I do live, while there have been occasional hiccups to the new way of doing things, they’ve had no serious impact to the service that is provided. Certainly nothing sufficient to justify the appellation ‘botch’.
We recycle diligently and we find two weeks manageable, that is the bins two weeks and the recycle every week.
I expect four weeks to get more dumped up the lanes.
It would be good to push supermarkets and suppliers etc. on waste packaging overall to help here.
Cutting collections will eventually cost more as people will fly tip and use public bins to get rid of waste which then has to be picked up. Then there is a hygiene issue and rats.