No plans to abandon weekly collections, insists city bins chief Council sneaking fortnightly service in back door, claim Tories
BIRMINGHAM’S bins chief has said that the city will not abandon weekly refuse collections until there is a dramatic reduction in the amount of rubbish thrown out by households.
The retention of weekly collections is included in the new wide-ranging 20-year waste strategy set to be adopted by Birmingham City Council next week.
Labour cabinet member for clean streets Lisa Trickett confirmed that the weekly collections are not only going to be resumed once the service is back on track after the binmen’s dispute, but will continue for the foreseeable future.
Opposition Tories have accused her of merely postponing the introduction of fortnightly collections until 2019, once troublesome elections are out of the way, and a new bin service contract is in place.
Cllr Trickett (Lab, Moseley and Kings Heath) said: “It’s in the strategy – there is a red line around weekly collections. The Conservatives don’t seem to be able to understand plain English. We are maintaining weekly collections in this city.”
She said that the amount of residual household waste collected shows that they need to maintain the current level of service. However, she admitted that a central plank of the Waste Strategy is to reduce the amount of waste in the first place – whether its general stuff, food waste or recycling. Therefore, if most people’s bins were only half-full each week, then they may look at changes to the frequency, swapping the weekly service for recycling, or changing the frequencies in some parts of the city.
But the Conservative leader Robert Alden (Erdington) is not convinced and suggest the plan is hidden in the strategy.
He said: “Labour are trying to sneak fortnightly collections through the back door. It is clear in the cabinet report they are asking bidders for the tender to start in 2019, to do so on the basis of fortnightly We oppose this.”
The council is also ruling out the introduction of food waste collections and will focus on work with retailers and education of households to reduce waste.
Cllr Trickett said another potential medium-term solution would be communitybased food waste recycling and that small scale anaerobic digesters currently in development, which turn organic waste into usable gas, could be “placed in an alley”.
The Waste Strategy sets out plans for bin collections, renewable energy generation and recycling until 2040 and is due to be adopted by the Labour council cabinet next Tuesday, October 3.
It will be launched in 2019, when the city council finishes paying the 25-year “mortgage” on the Tyseley Incinerator – saving about £10 million a year. With fast moving technology and efforts to reduce the waste generate over all, the council will avoid getting locked in to contracts of longer that five to seven years in future. Much of the focus for development, particularly of renewable energy sources, will be in the Tyseley area, while a facility to allow the council to recycle its own bottles, jars and papers rather than use a commercial operator will be considered if the business case stacks up. collections.