Stephen's views on recycling in Bristol
Low levels of recycling meant that for years, Bristol faced the possibility of considerable council tax rises due to additional landfill tax bills resulting from an unsustainable waste disposal system. Faced with this environmental and financial imperative, the new Liberal Democrat administration at Bristol City Council, elected in 2005, designed a new strategy for waste management informed by extensive consultation with the public and environmental groups. The council has also looked at best practice in other parts of the country where many other Liberal Democrat controlled authorities achieve impressive recycling rates.
The central part of the strategy is to achieve a weekly recycling collection of all household waste that it is practicable to collect from the kerbside. The residue of household waste that cannot be recycled should form a significantly reduced proportion of total waste so the collection of black bins needs to take place only once a fortnight. A number of other local authorities across the country have already successfully introduced alternate week collection including Cambridge, Mid-Devon and Chorley among others.
Waste that can be recycled or disposed of in a more sustainable way will now be collected separately. Food waste forms 30% of the average contents of a Bristol bin, and until now this has been buried in landfill sites. As part of the government's policy to increase the amount of waste recycled, efforts are now being made to isolate biodegradable waste to reduce the pressure on our already over-stretched landfill facilities in the area. This will reduce the methane emissions from decomposing buried organic waste.
Bristol City Council has introduced brown bins for weekly kitchen waste collections. This service will operate free alongside the existing weekly black box recycling collection. The improvements to the service will allow cardboard to be collected and recycled along side the kitchen waste, rather than going to landfill as at present.
There are of course other items that are suitable for recycling such as plastic bottles, electrical equipment and garden waste. Plastic bottles take up a great deal of space so the council has decided to increase the number of community recycling collection points rather than acquire more recycling vehicles. The number of city-wide collection points has been increased. However, there are still too few in Bristol West and I am pressing the council and supermarkets to make more sites available.
Waste electrical equipment (charmingly known as WEE to council officers!) should be taken to the city's civic amenity sites at Avonmouth or St Phillips. Garden waste has hitherto been suitable either for home composting or for taking to the civic amenity sites. The council has decided to introduce a new third option of kerbside collection. There will be an initial charge of £21 for a green garden waste wheelie bin and a further charge of 55p a week (£29 a year) to empty this bin weekly. As around 30% of all Bristol residents live in flats and therefore generate little or no garden waste the council have decided that it would be unfair to expect these people to subsidise the garden waste collection through their Council Tax. Thus the decision was taken to provide the bins only to those who needed and requested them. It should be noted that the Council is not making any profits for the green waste scheme. Additionally, the Council is currently considering a scheme to collect 'green bags' from homes that occasionally generate garden waste.
The Council has attempted to balance budget constraints with what is best for the environment. As the scheme rolls out across the city there will inevitably be some teething problems. The Council will keep the policy under continuous review and will strive to make improvements.
As with all change it will take a while for people to become accustomed to the new system. However, I believe the success of similar schemes in other local authority areas can be duplicated here in Bristol. Already our recycling rate has topped 30% and I am confident that we can become one of the leading UK cities in landfill reduction.
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