Talking rubbish Cllr slams Conservatives’ bin ad ‘lies’
ThE number of bins Bristol people have to put out each week became the surprising subject of a national political debate, after the Conservatives claimed the city’s Labour-run council was ‘forcing residents’ to put their rubbish and recycling into nine different containers.
The national Conservative Party included Bristol in their ‘Your Future Under Labour?’ campaign, which has blitzed social media this week, but both Bristol Waste and the councillor in charge of waste and the environment in Bristol said what the Conservatives claimed ‘just isn’t true.’
The Conservatives posted on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook with a picture of piles of bins and rubbish with the headline ‘Labour enforce nine-container recycling,’ and a subheading which read “Bristol Council is forcing residents to separate rubbish into nine different containers”.
There was no further reference to Bristol and its number of recycling boxes contained within the Conservatives’ new ‘Life Under Labour’ website pages – which the social media posts led to. There are sections entitled ‘See what life is ALREADY like under Labour,’ that include claims about Birmingham, Camden and Manchester – but nothing about Bristol.
Bristol Waste, the city council-owned domestic waste collection company, replied to the Conservatives’ claim with a link to the guide on its website detailing how to sort recycling in Bristol. The firm replied: “This is incorrect. Bristol’s kerbside recycling system has five containers, which are a green box, black box, blue bag, foody caddy and general waste bin.”
And the council’s cabinet member for waste and the environment, Labour’s Cllr Marley Bennett replied to the Conservatives’ tweet and said: “As Bristol’s cabinet member for waste, I can confirm this just isn’t true. But remember, there’s no need to separate Conservative leaflets from card – they can be recycled together.”
Cllr Bennett told the Post: “Unable to make a positive case for why people should vote for them, the Conservatives are resorting to lying about the number of bins we have in Bristol.
“Anyone can see them for what they are. We need a General Election in order to restore truth and integrity in Government,” he added. It is unclear where the Conservatives’ claim that the Labour-run council is ‘forcing’ people to have nine different containers or bins for their waste. Most people in the city have those five mentioned by Bristol Waste – a large wheelie bin for general rubbish that is collected every fortnight, and four containers for recycling – a black box for paper and glass, green box for plastic and cans, a little brown bin for food waste and a blue sack for cardboard and brown paper. Some residents pay extra to have a sixth bin – to collect garden waste too.
however, there are extra instructions for less common items that people might occasionally throw away, which Bristol Waste said can be recycled and so shouldn’t be put in the general waste wheelie bin. Bristol Waste advises people to put a range of items like batteries, shoes, spectacles, textiles and small electrical items in separate, untied bags inside the black recycling box, while anyone trying to discard unwanted or used engine oil is asked to put it in a sealed container next to the box, and car batteries should be placed next to the black box, but also outside it.
This extra advice formed the basis of complaints from residents of one street in Clifton last December, who claimed they were having to split their waste into 13 different bags and boxes. however, the basis of their complaints were the number of regular bins being left out by so many residents because all of the large houses on their Georgian terraced street had been converted into flats, and no one had anywhere to store their bins all week.