THE DUSTBIN JOBSWORTHS
Misery for families as thousands of reeking bins go unemptied, often for trivial reasons – including the lid being left slightly ajar
COUNCIL staff are refusing to empty thousands of bins when families break petty household waste rules. An alarming 16,679 bins were left unemptied last year, leaving families struggling to dispose of rubbish and posing a public health risk by encouraging vermin.
Council staff are told to leave rubbish at the kerbside if they decide it poses a health and safety risk to them.
But while the definition of such risk includes legitimate problems such as bins that are too heavy to lift, it also covers cases where rubbish has simply become wedged within the bin.
Council staff will also refuse to take bins where the lids are not fully closed or where households – even those waiting four weeks to have their rubbish collected – have left out any extra black bags.
In edinburgh, more than 7,000 bins were left by bin men, leaving families waiting up to a month to have rubbish taken away.
Pest control experts say the practice has contributed to a soaring problem with rats in the city.
Tory MSP Alex Johnstone said: ‘ hardworking council tax payers deserve a good refuse collection service, where they’re not punished for throwing rubbish in the bin.
‘We are constantly hearing reports of
over-zealous council staff coming down hard on families and individuals who just want their bins emptied. Instead of obsessing about increasing their quotas on infractions, council staff should be getting their act together and providing a trouble-free refuse collection service.’
Sylvia Hill, of Edinburgh-based Wee Critters Pest Control, said: ‘It’s ridiculous. If they want to keep the rat populations under control, the rules must be changed. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
‘Rats are accumulating in vast numbers in Edinburgh. I would say last year there was an increase of 40 per cent.’
Households who break the increasingly strict rules on rubbish and recycling risk a fine and criminal record for fly-tipping if they get it wrong.
Collections have been slashed to the point no mainland council now has weekly pick-ups for all its homes. This month, Fife became the first council in Scotland to pilot four-week bin collections.
In some areas, families who want extra bins are forced to fill in a bin ‘diary’ of what they throw away or, for those with medical conditions, a note from their GP.
Meanwhile, bin men are increasingly being asked to act as snoopers to enforce the rules. A Freedom of Information request has revealed that refuse collectors in Aberdeenshire are given route sheets to record households that leave out too much rubbish.
In Angus, they leave information tags on bins to inform families they have overloaded their bins or contaminated recycling. Argyll and Bute, Clackmannanshire and North and South Ayrshire also leave notices, information hangers and cards. Bin men in South Lanarkshire note addresses so householders who contaminate their recycling can be ‘visited and advised’.
The Scottish Daily Mail asked all 32 councils how many bins had been left full by bin men because of waste ‘infractions’.
The City of Edinburgh Council refused to empty 7,143 bins. On 346 occasions, refuse workers noted that the bins were too heavy and almost 600 times said they were not properly closed – although some of these were picked up during an ‘amnesty period’ after a new recycling service was introduced.
North Lanarkshire refused to take 4,605 bins in 2014-15. Perth and Kinross left 1,680. The other councils that admitted to leaving waste behind were Fife, Falkirk, West Lothian and Clackmannanshire.
Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Authorities must work to find a solution to this problem. Rubbish collection is a basic service which taxpayers are perfectly entitled to expect in return for their council tax. Leaving rubbish is only going to create more problems.’
A spokesman for Perth and Kinross Council said: ‘We will decline to collect waste bins where the bins are too heavy to move or empty, as this presents an issue for safe manual handling by staff.
‘The council does not use bin weighing equipment, so it is therefore not possible to weigh bins at the kerbside. As such, a judgment has to be made by staff as to whether a bin can be safely moved and emptied in the usual way.’
A spokesman for City of Edinburgh Council said: ‘We recently introduced an improved recycling service which provides an increased capacity for household waste.
‘We carry out 26 million bin uplifts every year. While people were getting used to the new system, there were a small number of cases where bins could not be collected due to them being too heavy to be safely lifted. When this occurs, we contact the resident to provide advice and help make arrangements for their excess waste to be collected.’
A North Lanarkshire Council spokesman said: ‘Weekly collections are still made, though on a clear cycle depending on the type of waste, and we have never refused a residual waste bin containing material going to landfill.’
A spokesman for council umbrella body Cosla said: ‘Entirely and rightly, these issues are operational procedures for individual councils.’
Comment – Page 16
‘Accumulating in vast numbers’