WARRINGTON’S black bin collections are to go fortnightly in the New Year – subject to a major public consultation exercise.
The change will save the borough council around £1 million a year – but Town Hall chiefs also claim it will result in numerous other benefits.
Cllr David Keane, executive member for environment and public protection at the council, said: “Our recycling rate is already strong and we want to it get even better.
“This move will save the authority a significant amount of money, there’s no denying that. But it will also have very positive benefits for the environment and our residents as well.”
The council’s executive board has also approved a new five year waste treatment and disposal contract which will see 55,000 tonnes of locally collected waste diverted from Arpley landfill site and sent outside the borough to be converted to fuel.
Currently, the borough’s recycling rate stands at just over 43 per cent and the council has committed to raise this to at least 55 per cent by 2020 as part of its waste management strategy.
Among the benefits claimed are:
*Less confusion, with waste collections provided on the same day each week.
*An estimated 3,000 tonnes of recyclable waste will be put in blue, rather than black, bins.
*About 450 tonnes of green waste will be diverted from black to green bins.
In addition, the council will require 82,000 litres less of diesel each year and 260 tonnes of CO2 emissions will be saved annually.
A public consultation about the move will be carried out in the New Year, with the results of this exercise reported back to the executive board in February.
Bin collections to go fortnightly
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Gary Skentelbery
Experienced journalist for more than 40 years. Managing Director of magazine publishing group with three in-house titles and on-line daily newspaper for Warrington. Experienced writer, photographer, PR consultant and media expert having written for local, regional and national newspapers. Specialties: PR, media, social networking, photographer, networking, advertising, sales, media crisis management. Chair of Warrington Healthwatch Director Warrington Chamber of Commerce Patron Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace. Trustee Warrington Disability Partnership. Former Chairman of Warrington Town FC.
10 Comments
Glad to see the Council make the move to fortnightly collection. Lets hope there is not a tidal wave of selfish individuals who make them back down on something which makes envionmental and economic sense.
Do we get a reduction in our Council tax then? Yeah right – pigs will fly…..
An excellent idea – perhaps it will encourage people to use their blue bins (I wonder if Caz was demanding an increase in his/her council tax when they were introduced). Glad to see the Labour Council not giving into the pressure from Tory Minister Eric Pickles, who was even offering financial incentives to councils to keep the weekly service.
When they say – “converted to fuel) do they mean used in an incinerator – remember all those scaremongering lies Labour were telling about alleged plans for one when they were in opposition.
Gene, There will not be a Tidal Wave of Selfish INDIVIDUALS. I think the phrase you are looking for instead of the condescending one you used is “lets hope the voices of concerned FAMILIES will be heard”.
I was at a refuse centre just this weekend, recycling Rubbish and also dropping some in the landfill waste bin. I used my own time and money and do this once in a while, I dont mind. What I do mind is if it becomes a regular occurance because a service has been taken away.
I appreciate if you are a single person or a couple your bin collection needs arent as great as those of a young large family. Is that how things are decided these days just on the whim of your own personal circumstances. If I demanded tax increases on cigs and booze because I use neither ,but demanded tax decreases on petrol because I’m a driver, thats selfish ,Not Wanting a Service cut that I and many others use and need is not selfish.
i for one am glad..we recycle a lot of our waste,we have a compost bin for our veggie plots and could easily handle fortnightly collections..well my neighbour will cope, they have two black bins and can only be bothered to put them both out every fortnight when they are overflowing!!
We use our green bin a lot – and would do in the winter too if it were emptied. We don’t, however, use our blue bin at all because the whole premise that it is based on is environmentally flawed. All of the councils recycling targets are based on the weight of material recycled – not on how harmful to the environment the material is. The vast majority of the tonnage the council claims to be recycling is made up of paper and glass. Paper is easily biodegradable and glass is inert, neither are harmful to the environment when put into landfill. Recycling paper, however, involves significant energy input and the use of large quantities of chlorine and other bleaching agents which most definitely ARE harmful to the environment. In addition, trees are not “cut down” to make paper – they are planted for the purpose and farmed as a cash crop, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow. Glass is made out of sand – hardly a scarce commodity – and it actually takes MORE energy to transport, sort and melt down recycled glass to make new than it does to make brand new glass. So I don’t buy a newspaper in the first place, and I re-use glass containers wherever possible – but any of either that do become waste most definitely end up in the black bin since this is the least environmentally damaging disposal route for these two materials. The only reason that councils want us to recycle glass and paper products has nothing at all to do with the environment. It is simply because both are heavy, and so both bump up the tonnage which governments and councils can claim to be recycling. Thus relieving them of the responsibility to tackle the REAL problems – REDUCTION of the production of waste in the first place, and RE-USE of packaging and other materials. As with most things involving governments or councils, it’s all a great big con.
What gives you the right to brand others as selfish individuals just because you don’t have as much waste. I do my bit for the environment and recycle as much as possible but my circumstances like many others are clearly very different than yours.
I’ll struggle with fortnightly collections and almost certainly I’ll need to make trips to the tip along with all the other selfish families. We’ll all sit in the queues, which by the way, are going to get a lot longer and we’ll all be emitting bucket loads of pollution. Course we’d all rather not do this but for people like yourself or those too lazy to put the bin out each week, who are forcing us into this situation by encouraging the council.
So many of the responses welcoming these proposals seem to be coming from people just like this who seem to see the situation as some form of popularity contest. There’ll be no winners, no losers, and nobody will be inconvenienced if it doesn’t go ahead but if it does then the larger families will suffer.
If 50percent of the people are happy with a fortnightly collection then let them do it but let the other 50% do it weekly. That way nobody’s inconvenienced, everyone gets what they need and with 25% less bins to empty, there has to be savings. It’s a compromise but there’s no down side.
Well there’s a solution Eliie, get the council to provide us all with gardens like yours. I bet you don’t have to wheel a smelly bin through your house or have it sitting right against your front door because there’s nowhere else to put it. Your response seems quite typical of those advocating fortnightly collections in showing absolutely no consideration at all for those with circumstances very different than your own.
Even if one accepts your dubious analysis, surely even you cannot believe it is acceptable to take up more and more land with landfill – even if some of that refuse buried there is “inert”.