Bin Collections going Monthly
If you haven’t seen the recent news, you may not know that local authorities now plan to move to monthly bin collections. This change is already causing outrage among residents who struggle with smelly, overflowing bins. Flies and rodents are also attracted to the uncollected rubbish.
Councils say they want to increase recycling levels, and they face financial pressures. Because of this, they aim to reduce how often they collect general waste.
Under European Union targets, the UK must recycle at least half of all household waste by 2020. The current rate is 43 per cent.
However, MPs warn that three- or four-weekly bin collections pose a health risk. They argue that EU green targets are simply being used as an excuse for cuts.
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said councils can achieve strong recycling rates with fortnightly collections. Therefore, he believes monthly collections cannot be justified. He also warned that anything less than a two-week cycle attracts flies, pests, and unpleasant smells.
“People need to lobby their council and tell them they do not want this.”
The situation has become so desperate in some areas where monthly bin collections are now in place, that residents have resorted to burning waste or taking it to work.
But why has this occurred in the first place?
Britain does not have the infrastructure to recycle its own plastic waste, so it sends much of it abroad. For 28 years, Britain relied on China to take its unwanted plastics. However, in November 2017, China said “enough” and closed its doors to contaminated plastic. As a result, the waste shifted to nearby countries such as Vietnam, South Korea, and Thailand.
These countries do not have the capacity to handle the huge volume of plastic China once accepted. Therefore, the waste is now piling up. A study in Science Advances reports that between now and 2030, 111 million metric tons of plastic—bags, bottles, straws, and more—will have nowhere to go. That amount equals every person on Earth adding a quarter of their body weight in single-use plastic to one massive, abandoned pile of rubbish.
But just to confuse the situation even more for householders the latest headlines in the Telegraph are: Councils will tell households to bin plastic as recycling goes into reverse.
The first council in the UK has said it is planning to tell residents to stop recycling mixed plastic, sparking fears that years of progress on reducing black bag waste is on the verge of going into reverse. Read on
I don’t know about you but as a country we seem to being going backwards and just what have we been doing with all the money the waste has generated in the last 28 years?