YOUR PICTURE OF THE WEEK
Mother and ducklings by the canal at Copley by Ruth Greenwood
provide services to local residents and businesses.
I accept that there has been a need to close household waste recycling centres during the first stage of the Covid close down, but like the rest of the councils taking such action, without implementing an alternative, we are seeing a huge rise in incidences of fly tipping.
During lockdown it seems that many people are having clear-outs, doing DIY and other things that increase the amount of waste created per average household.
At present the council’s response seems to be to simply publicise that fly tipping is a crime and can lead to heavy fines and a criminal record etc.
It has come to my attention that other councils are not just brandishing sticks, they are also dangling carrots.
A particularly good example that I have found is the ‘Don’t tip it, Skip it’ initiative in West Lancashire, where the council drops off community skips in various areas on set days (which are publicised).
Residents can then take their waste along (obviously not including hazardous and food waste, etc) and skip it.
Council officers accompany each skip to ensure that social distancing rules are complied with and inform colleagues when a skip is at capacity and needs collecting.
This strikes me as a great idea, allowing the collection of much waste that would end up needing collecting from laybys, fields, woodlands and rural roads etc.
It should therefore be cost effective and friendly to the local environment.
Ihaveruntheideabya
‘It has come to my attention that other councils are not just brandishing sticks, they are also dangling carrots’
ROGER TAYLOR
number of residents of the district and support for the idea has been unanimous amongst those questioned.
So I am publicly calling on the Labour Council Executive to look at implementing something similar as soon as possible and I can see no reason why they would not support it.