James,
I feel your precis of the explanations received from Wychavon to your questions does not give the full picture, and so, in the interests of allowing the public to judge for themselves, I am taking the liberty of placing an unexpurgated copy of the full text below:-

Dear Mr Hickman

I am the head of the service with responsibility for waste and recycling and I will be very pleased to
answer the points you have recently raised. Before I go through each point I would like to say that I
do ask you to give some more thought to your regular use of the term ?Bin Gestapo?. I do not think
it is at all an appropriate term to use for my staff who have spent a great deal of time and patience
talking with thousands of residents and in the vast majority of cases coming up with mutually
satisfactory solutions. The changes in people?s lives resulting from the introduction of a new waste
and recycling collection service can in my view hardly compare with the atrocities and crimes
against humanity that were caused by the real Gestapo.    

 

The Council?s approach has been to consult and listen to our residents. With a population of
116,000 we will never get universal support and agreement on all aspects of our services but we
work hard at communicating and working with our residents. An example of this in practice is the
Council?s clear decision to not fit bin chips.      

 

Comment 1 ? Labels

 

Labels are provided as an option for residents to use if they wish -you will note from the labels and
information pack that there is no compulsion to use them. The inclusion of the labels was agreed
by the Council on the grounds that we wanted to discourage the identification of the large wheelie
bins with hand painted numbers or names which invariably runs. Therefore the labels are intended
for the wheelie bins rather than the much smaller food bins. However as mentioned residents have a
choice on how to use the labels provided.

 

Comment 2 ? Time of Bin Availability

 

Our advice on the time of putting waste and recycling out for collection has not changed with the
new service. Our contractors start their collections from 7am in the morning and have to start their
rounds somewhere in the district so we are informing the public that to guarantee a collection the
waste and recycling containers need to be out by 7am. The new service will result in the provision
of new rounds for the crews which inevitably will have an impact on what time a crew gets to a
property. Consequently someone who for example currently puts out their waste and recycling at 9
am for a 10am collection may be at the start of the new round and would therefore have their
collection missed. By repeating the collection start time we are trying to avoid this happening. In
time the crews will settle into a collection pattern and residents will get to know the regular new
timing of their service and will make their own judgement on when to put out their containers.

 

Many residents do currently put out their waste and recycling the night before and I am sure that
this practice will continue in the future. A real benefit of wheelie bins and food bins, compared with
sacks, is that they won?t be ripped opened by animals and vermin overnight as often happens at
the moment.

 

Comment 3 ? Environmental Logic

 

Most properties in our current service have 3 vehicles visiting every 2 weeks. This consists of a
weekly split bodied refuse/recycling vehicle plus a glass collection service every 2 weeks.

 

The new service also involves 3 vehicles visiting every 2 weeks. Consists of week 1 a recycling
vehicle plus food waste vehicle and week 2 a general waste vehicle.

 

The environmental logic of the new service is that we will increase significantly the amount of
material sent for recycling and conversely reduce the amount going to landfill. In addition the main
split bodied vehicles have environmental and economic inefficiencies in that they have to return to
disposal sites when one of the two sides are full. With the standard use of single bodied vehicles
we are able to operate much more efficiently with vehicles only returning to disposal sites when full.
This efficiency is reflected in the lower cost to Council tax payers for the new service.

 

Comment 4 ? Cost Effectiveness of Food Waste

 

The Council?s waste and recycling service have been under consideration for the last 4 years linked
to the need to re-tender our waste and recycling contract and replace the vehicle fleet. In finalising
the decision the Council had to balance a range of needs including public opinion, affordability,
disposal opportunities and government targets.

Pre-decision we carried out extensive public consultation including an extensive household survey,
focus groups and public roadshows. A clear message from our residents was that they wanted food
waste collected weekly with recycling and other waste collected fortnightly. Our new service is
responding directly to this need whilst delivering a service more affordable than our current service.

We do not wish to mis-lead the public and so we have explained clearly the different collection
arrangements for food waste. As explained above the Council had to make a balanced judgement
and it was felt that a separate collection of food waste for composting on both weeks was not
affordable. 

 

Comment 5 ? Food Waste/Grey Bins

 

Just to make it absolutely clear the public are not being forced to operate the food waste service.
We are offering a service that the public in our consultations have in large numbers asked for and it
will be up to each individual home to decide how it uses the service or not. This is certainly our
experience with operating the service in around half of all homes in Wychavon with different
practical arrangements including :

•No participation in the food waste service because residents already have in place home
composting and don?t have cooked food waste (or if they do it goes in the pet dog !).
•Homes that store their food waste for 2 weeks because they want it all to go for composting.
•Food placed in the grey bin so that the food bin doesn?t need to be put out.    

 

I have faith that with the information that we have provided people will make their own decisions on
what is best for them. The only requirement we have is that if they put out the food waste for
separate composting that they don?t use material unsuitable for composting.  You may think this is
dictatorial but I would say that people after going to the effort of sorting out their food waste would
not be pleased if it was not used for composting.

 

Comment 6 ? Reasonable Care  

 

I have confidence that the general public and the Council will use common sense on what would be
viewed as reasonable care. The Council could do a long list of do?s and don?ts with the reasonable
care of bins but this would not be good use of our time and quite frankly I am sure that this would
be considered as very patronising. Only after frequent requests from a householder for the
replacement of bins because of thefts or breakages will we investigate whether reasonable care is
being taken.

 

Comment 7- Wrong Type of  Rubbish  

 

I recognise that residents put a great deal of thought and effort into sorting their recycling materials
from their general waste. In return they quite rightly expect the Council to ensure the recycling
material actually gets recycled. If the material we collect is highly contaminated this can result in a
batch being rejected by re-processors and potentially landfilled ? clearly undermining the whole
effort. It is therefore important that we communicate what material is right for recycling and what is
not. As part of the new service we have provided additional ways of communicating this message
e.g. embossed on the bins, information pack but have been informing the public for many years.
Again I have faith in people using common sense with regards to the cleanliness of items such as
food cans and will always advice over the phone if people have any queries with regards to the
suitability of different materials.

 

Under the old system crews would leave recycling sacks if it was clear that significant unsuitable
material had been included and added stickers to explain why it had been left – again helping to
communicate with our residents. The new service will continue to use this practice. Having a sticker
placed on a container does not result in a fixed penalty notice fine and the refuse and recycling
crews do not have the power to issue them.

The Council does have authorised officers for issuing fines but it is a power that we use in only
extreme cases with talking to residents our first approach.

 

Comment 8 ? Food Bin Liners

          

As you will read in the information pack which came with the bins we are not solely advocating the
use of compostable food bin liners. However our research of areas with established food waste
collection identified that bin liners are popular with a significant number of people and helped
increase participation levels. The Council?s Waste Implementation Team supported the
development of a retail network for liners to give residents choosing this method more local retail
options, especially in the villages. This recommendation was supported by the Council and leading
liner suppliers were invited to express an interest. Following a selection process which included the
completion of a questionnaire and an interview the two companies (others were rejected) were
invited to work alongside the Council with the roll out of the new services. These companies have
supplied the information included in the packs. No financial contribution has been made to the
Council by these companies. They were chosen on non-financial criteria such as the quality of their
products and their ability to establish a local retail network.   

 

I hope the above helps clarifies the issues you raise.

 

 

Phil Merrick

Head of Community Services

Wychavon District Council

Thank you for that Anna, I did not feel comfortable publishing the entire text for reasons of copyright. The Council has in the past asserted copyright protection over such correspondence as a means to prevent publication to a wider audience. I am sure that you have the necessary permissions so thank you making this available to everyone.

James