WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH
Monthly and different ‘waste up assessors’ to collections bins. NINE Zealous dishing out fines. Plagues of rats, fears of disease and an ugly explosion in f ly-tipping. How on earth did we end up in this ghastly mess?
IT was an unsolicited visit from a clipboard-wielding official with an expression of grim determination, identifying himself to mother-of-two Madge Brown as a local authority ‘waste assessor’.
Later she would recount a Kafkaesque tale of the man rummaging through her bin – and threatening her with a fine when he found a drinks can among the rubbish. The Aberdeenshire bin snooper then demanded to see passports or utility bills for family members – to gauge if the amount of rubbish they generated could be justified.
Others who suffered a similar fate nicknamed these rubbish enforcers Dustbin Ladens, and soon they were operating across Scotland, to ensure householders toed the line drawn by the growing recycling agenda.
The emergence of the Dustbin Ladens, about a decade ago, came at a time when weekly bin collections were beginning to disappear – they are now, of course, a distant memory for millions. There were even reports of some council staff patrolling neighbourhoods in cars, checking up to make sure garden waste recycling bins were not being used for ordinary rubbish.
But these episodes turned out to be less of a bizarre aberration than the genesis of an extraordinary ‘green’ revolution as councils moved to fortnightly, then to three-weekly and monthly collections.
You might have thought that the primary function of any local authority is to serve the public that pays its wages. But this simple premise has been cast aside in the midst of a kind of mania that puts the promotion of green principles ahead of the needs of most ordinary householders.
EU targets demand at least half of all domestic waste be recycled by 2020, backed up with the threat of punitive taxation, and the UK Government is determined to meet them – despite Brexit.
THE Scottish Government has its own ambitious targets, including the reduction of food waste by 33 per cent by 2025. Landfill tax, now devolved to Holyrood, has long been sky-high, but for councils in the midst of economic turmoil there is the added incentive that fewer bin collections help slash costs.
The Zero Waste Scotland (ZWS) quango recently revealed that Scots generated 2.5million tons of waste last year, equivalent to almost 7,000 tons a day, but almost half of that went to recycling centres – a record amount.
But more waste is also being generated – which shows the massive ramping-up of recycling has not persuaded people to limit their production of rubbish.
And reducing waste is a goal likely to remain beyond the grasp of larger families with children – or anyone contending with the huge amounts of packaging that accompany so many postal deliveries.
The recycling figures represent a victory for those who championed a reduction in the frequency of bin collections but – as other figures on recorded crime also show – they don’t tell the whole story.
Over the years, thousands of tons of household rubbish put out for ‘green’ disposal have been sent on an environmentally unfriendly trip to China because of a lack of processing plants in the UK.
Last year, it emerged that Perth and Kinross Council was sending waste 160 miles by road to be recycled at an industrial estate in Northumberland to save costs.
Meanwhile, the increasingly labyrinthine regimes for rubbish collection are forcing some families to put out different combinations of containers up to nine times in a month.
There are seven different receptacles in East Ayrshire, where unrecyclable waste is picked up every three weeks.
Some belated efforts are now being made by the Scottish Government to make bin uplifts more consistent, and to make recycling easier through the ‘triple stacking’ of containers – piling them on top of each other for pick-up.
East Ayrshire is one of the areas preparing for ‘triplestacking’ – but general waste will still be picked up only once every three weeks.
Fears are growing that in some areas fewer bin collections may be fuelling a flytipping epidemic – now running to nearly 1,000 incidents a week.
Several years ago, firefighters attributed a rise in illegally dumped rubbish being set on fire on waste ground to fortnightly bin collections.
Pest control firms warn the drift away from weekly collections has led to a spike in the rat population.
In Falkirk, where monthly bin pick-ups were introduced last year, SNP councillor David Alexander says the backlash from constituents was ‘horrendous’. Now a review of waste management is going on, which he said would help to establish if the policy change was fuelling fly-tipping.
EARLIER this year, he warned Roughmute recycling centre at Bonnybridge was in danger of being overwhelmed as ‘more people are travelling there because they are not getting their bins emptied’, and staff told him there were ‘increased instances of fly-tipping’.
While there have been some improvements, Mr Alexander believes the decision to bring in monthly collections was ‘rushed’ and driven by costcutting, including a move to save £40,000 by failing to print ‘calendars’ detailing when bins should be put out for collection – creating huge confusion. The council’s official position is that there are no issues.
Fife Council is also trialling monthly collections of general
waste, which could be extended. Dr Richard Dixon, director of Friends of the Earth Scotland, welcomes the increase in recycling but admits the introduction of less frequent bin collections was ‘mishandled’ in some cases.
He said: ‘There are lot of people who like to recycle, and they feel good about doing it, but the system keeps changing and that can be very confusing.’
Across Scotland, 16,679 bins were left unemptied in 2014, leaving families struggling to dispose of rubbish and posing a public health risk by encouraging vermin. It is easy to see why fly-tipping, while clearly illegal, may have been a last resort for those who felt they had been let down by their councils.
Officials in North Lanarkshire have threatened to send staff to ‘educate’ families who fail to recycle properly after it rolled out its own recycling scheme.
Figures released by the local authority revealed that in the first month of its scheme, bin collectors left 10,000 ‘contaminated’ bins at the roadside every week.
Each of the offending containers was issued with a red warning ‘tag’, telling owners the reason for the offence and advising them how to rectify the problem.
After three strikes, ‘waste education officers’ will be sent out to teach repeat offenders which bins to use and when. Six failures to comply could see rubbish being uncollected – with the council reserving the right to halt services.
The scheme, in which households must juggle four differently coloured bins, had aimed to collect and process 1,000 tons of paper and plastic in the first four weeks.
In Aberdeenshire, a campaign group is taking legal action against the Scottish Government amid claims it is failing in its duty to keep major roads clear of litter.
FED-Up volunteers from the Aberdeenshire Environmental Forum are also taking their local council to court to force it to clean up rubbish dumped on pavements and roads.
Convener George Niblock said: ‘We’ve got to the point where we have decided to just go to court and let a sheriff decide. Enough is enough. We have already started by appointing a legal team and would like £1 from the many thousands of people who care about the state of the environment of the UK and want to change it.’
It is small wonder the decline in collections of general waste has also provided an opening for entrepreneurs. Bare Bins, a company launched by Rebecca and Jamie Hill, collects extra rubbish councils are unable to pick up.
They decided to buy a refuse lorry after their bins overflowed between fortnightly collections.
The couple, from West Calder, West Lothian, say they have found great demand for their service among families who tell them it is impossible to keep their waste down to one full bin per fortnight.
Mother-of-one Mrs Hill, 31, said she ‘finally reached boiling point when I spotted a rat running out from behind my bin one evening’. Meanwhile in Edinburgh, where general waste is collected fortnightly, many residents complain of a haphazard approach to rubbish uplifts.
It emerged last year that missed collections led to six complaints an hour after council bosses introduced smaller wheelie bins and fines of up to £50 for ‘overflowing’ bins with lids raised a few inches.
Homeowners are now expected to cram weeks of waste into smaller bins. It is estimated that almost a quarter of a million households are seeing their bins replaced with miniature versions.
perth and Kinross Council has replaced its 240-litre containers with 140-litre versions, while Aberdeen City has slashed its bins from 240 litres to 180 litres.
Scottish Tory environment spokesman Donald Cameron believes the green radicalism that began to influence municipal waste collection a decade ago is spiralling out of control.
‘Of course councils have a duty to ensure waste management is as environmentally friendly as possible,’ he said. ‘But they need to remember people don’t pay council tax just to be lectured about green issues – above all else, they want a decent service that’s value for money.’
What is certain is that the bins lunacy shows no sign of abating – in fact it is escalating.
COUNCILS are taking an ever more confrontational approach to householders fed up with smelly waste festering for weeks before the binmen turn up.
They are spending up to £1.5million a year on an army of waste officials – latter-day Dustbin Ladens – to rifle through bins.
They even have powers to go through people’s bins and photograph their letters in order to identify those who are deemed to have failed to recycle properly.
Families who don’t fit weeks’ worth of rubbish in their shrinking wheelie bins can expect a visit from one of the 78 waste officials now employed across the country.
The City of Edinburgh Council charges families £200 a time for ‘fly-tipping’ if they put out too many black bags and in 2014 it issued 500 fines. It made £37,600, while reporting those who refused to pay to the procurator fiscal, putting them at risk of a criminal conviction or a £40,000 fine. Despite the rush towards monthly bin collections, the Scottish Government’s own waste quango has expressed concerns over monthly pick-ups – after finding maggots, flies and mites in bins left for four weeks. ZWS warned last year of the risk of salmonella within rubbish standing for a month, which can cause serious illness and hospitalisation.
The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities insists councils ‘continue to listen to people’s concerns on waste and recycling’.
A spokesman said: ‘We are very aware of the problems that littering and fly-tipping cause, and always weigh up any consequences, including littering, when we change how we collect waste – while being aware that every individual has a personal responsibility not to litter or to fly tip.’
The Scottish Government, under Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham, is the driving force behind recycling – yet it has distanced itself from the councils tasked with implementing its vision.
‘It is for councils to decide how services are delivered in their area,’ a spokesman said. ‘Reducing the frequency of general waste collections should only be considered when a more regular food waste collection service is in place.’
As abdications of responsibility go, this one is monumental. But there can be no doubt among the millions of Scots surrounded by stinking waste for weeks on end that the green obsession is stoking an environmental nightmare.