Points and Comments from Brian Druce:

1. Park Cottage used to be collected on a Thursday in common with the rest of the village (with a few exceptions).  Now we are told that our day will be Wednesday; with Parkwood changed to Friday.  No alteration permitted; it is all to do with postcodes.  On how many days of the week will bin lorries be thundering up the street?
2. Previously there were up to three lorries each Thursday, i.e. Week A was brown bins/purple bags/black bags.  Week B was green bottle box/clear bags/black bags.
3. Will Hill Lane have wheelie bins?  Is there now a suitable vehicle to go up there?  Or will the residents be exempt?
4. We are told “no dirty foil” but no aluminium foil either.  This is unclear.

How are we to dispose of the new energy efficient bulbs when they wear out?  What about batteries from torches, radios etc?

5.   When the green bin is full, may the green glass collection box be used  as well?

FOOD WASTE.   The Council has provided  us with containers allowing us to dispose of 20+ litres per week!  We would have a job to eat that much in a fortnight.  As we have compost bins, access to a bonfire and neighbours with hungry animals, we expect our use of this box to be minimal.  What an astonishing indictment of our profligate Western society.

In 1960 Vance Packard published his book The Waste Makers.  His thesis that business was planning for obsolescence, in a systematic attempt to make us wasteful, has come entirely true.

As so often, society tries to cure the problem by tackling the symptoms and not the cause which I believe  is mainly

a.      Unbridled consumerism

b.     Convenience food

c.      The packaging industry.

Anyone who has been faced with, for example, one six inch nail in a blister pack, or a turnip individually shrink wrapped in high grade polythene, will understand what we have to deal with. The Victorian cottager only had to dispose of ashes, broken crockery, and unwanted bottles, which went into a pit at the end of his garden. No dustcarts and binmen in those (happier?) days!

Here is a summary of the guidance:

1. You do not have to label wheelie bins with the labels provided at all, it is entirely optional.

2. You may leave your bins out the night before collection without fear of punishment.

3. You do not have to use the food waste caddy at all !  They are entirely optional. You are allowed to put food waste in the Grey Wheelie bin every week and ignore the food caddy entirely if you wish.

4. You will not be charged for replacing your bin unless it is lost or damaged repeatedly.

5. The Council are happy to offer telephone support to clarify if any specific item can be recycled or not.
(I still think the written guidance is full of holes and perhaps the Council could provide more extensive guidance on their website, that could be added to every time a question is asked)

6. The refuse & recycling crews who can sticker your bin do not have the power to issue fixed penalty fines. This can only be done by “Authorized Officers” of the Council, it is not automatic after any given number of “stickerings” and I am assured will only be used in “Extreme Cases”.

I think that if Mr Merrick had written the guidance that was published, many of the concerns raised could have been avoided.

The crazy government idea that not complying with refuse collection requirements is a criminal matter, remains absurd.

Having to rely on the common sense of the local authority to ignore the letter of the law is certainly not satisfactory, but as long as they do override stupid laws with common sense it looks like the worst case scenario will be avoided.

James

I, like many, mistakenly believed that we paid the Council, through our taxes, to deal with our rubbish. That WE were the paying customers and THEY were our contractor who simply did a job for us !

I am not sure how we allowed these Public Servants to become our Public Masters swamping us in a deluge of laws, punishable by criminal conviction, if we don’t bend over backwards and jump through hoops to make the job of collecting our rubbish as easy as possible for them?

It seems to me that we have all fallen asleep and woken up to find ourselves in the Soviet Republic of Wychavon!

I have  raised the following questions with our local Councillor:

Anna “Wheelie Bin” Mackison

who, for those who don’t know, is also the “Executive Member for the Environment”, the Council Committee responsible for imposing all this nonsense:

1) Is there a reason why only two name stickers have been provided to each household for labelling the bins ? This seems a little odd as there are three bins. The Green Bin, The Grey Bin and the Food Caddy. Are we supposed to leave one of these three unlabelled and if so which one? Will we get a knock on the door from the Bin Gestapo if we label the wrong ones?

2) The leaflet says that residents should place their bins outside by 7:00am on the day of collection. Does this mean that residents who don’t want to get up at the crack of dawn and who instead choose to leave their bins out the night before collection day will receive a visit from the Bin Gestapo ? Can you please clarify if it acceptable to leave bins out the night before collection? It would seem harsh to deprive our pensioners of their well earned rest and drag them out of bed at 6:00am solely to meet the requirements of the draconian new bin laws?

3) It appears that there is some confusion in the Council’s think tank about whether food waste recycling is cost effective or not. One week we, the taxpayers, are to be charged for a special diesel belching van that comes and collects the food waste and takes it for recycling. Presumably the wise people at the council have decided that sending this van around to collect food waste is a good way to spend taxpayers money. However, the next week, the food waste is chucked in the back of the non re-cycling van and dumped in land fill. Presumably because the wise people at the council have decided that it is not a good use of taxpayers’ money to collect and re-cycle food waste. Either it is a good use of taxpayers’ money to recycle food waste or it isn’t.  I struggle to see how it can be a good use of taxpayers’ money one week, but not the following week ?

4) On Grey Bin weeks the carefully sorted and collected food waste is to be dumped in the same landfill site as the non recyclable grey bin waste. Would it not make sense to spare the burdened council tax payers the hassle of sorting the waste on these weeks? I know that public officials generally think the citizenry exist simply to comply with their edicts but perhaps you could assure me that failure to go through the entirely pointless task of sorting food waste on grey bin weeks will not result in a knock on the door from the Bin Gestapo.

5) Under the heading of “Damaged, lost or stolen bins” we are solemnly advised that we are required to take reasonable care of the Council’s bins or we may be charged for replacements. Perhaps you could clarify the level of reasonable care expected in the prevention of having one’s bin stolen. Are we expected to keep the bin locked in a secure storage unit overnight, or perhaps deploy a private security firm to ensure that vandals do not get too close to the bin?  As far as damaging the bins, are we required to stand over the Council’s contractors when they empty the bin, in order to ensure that they do not damage it through carelessness or harsh treatment. I would certainly like to know Just how much of my life the Council requires me to dedicate to the preservation of their bins, before the Bin Gestapo reach the presumably unilateral, behind closed doors, with no right of appeal, verdict that I have failed to meet their “Reasonable Care” standard.

6) Placing the wrong type of rubbish in the bin can result in the Bin Gestapo “stickering” your bin and refusing to take it away. Since such “stickerings” can eventually result in a criminal conviction, the public damage to someone’s reputation of having their bin “stickered” is not inconsequential. Can you reassure me that In the event that the Bin Gestapo “sticker” a citizens bin in error, the Council will be paying compensation for damage to reputation, defamation of character, etc ? It would seem to me that it is quite easy to make an honest error in identifying what is or is not allowed in the sacred Green Bin.

E.g. who determines the level of cleanliness that divides the “clean food cans” allowed in the Green Bin from the “dirty cans” forbidden from the Green Bin. Just how dirty does a paper item need to be before it is forbidden from the Green Bin under the wet or dirty provisions? Is a metal jar lid with a plastic coating allowed in the Green Bin ? Is a paperback book allowed in the Green Bin. Hardbacks are forbidden, but the document is silent on paperbacks, (unless wet or dirty). What about a corrugated cardboard egg box ? Allowed under the egg box provisions, but excluded under the corrugated cardboard provision. How about an unwanted mirror, alas the guidance is silent. “Thin card” is allowed in the Green Bin but no guidance is given on when thickness crosses the thin-thick divide and leads the citizen open to a public “stickering”. One man’s thick, is another man’s, “actually quite thin”.  I am keen to recycle, but if I am struggling to make correct judgements about what is recyclable, what hope is there for the 83 year old pensioner whose mind may no longer be at its peak of sharpness.

Is there a process of appealing a public “stickering”, where experts can be called and the citizen may seek to clear his name. Surely the Waste Removal Engineer (Bin Man) cannot be judge jury and executioner, a man whose judgement is infallible and whose word alone is law ?

I will of course publish the replies from our councillor as and when I get them.

Another outbreak of Fly Tipping. This time on the right hand side of Netherton lane, travelling towards the Cheltenham Road. Once again it is tyres that are the problem, just like last year. http://archive.eveshamjournal.co.uk/2007/1/22/445830.html
http://archive.eveshamjournal.co.uk/2006/12/7/439428.html

(Read the PS at the end of this article to find out why it is so often tyres)

If anyone knows anything about the latest outbreak they can report it either to the environmental hotline on 01386 565656

or Anonymously via crimestoppers:
http://archive.eveshamjournal.co.uk/2008/1/29/505147.html

According to an article in the Worcester News in April 2007, a flytipping incident is reported nationally every 12 seconds and in the Wychavon Area alone there were 944 cases reported with a clean up cost to local taxpayers of £47,502

Of course there is no excuse for fly tipping and those who do it are irresponsible criminals.

However, poorly considered waste management legislation and policy currently encourage fly tipping, making the problem worse:

Research shows that there are four groups of people who fly-tip.

In the first three cases, which presumably account for the vast majority of fly tipping, the reasons driving the behaviour can be summed up as:

“legitimate disposal of waste is expensive and inconvenient”

On a local level, the lack of convenience and abundance of red tape certainly seems to be an issue:

“On approaching the municipal tip recently in my company car which is a Nissan Navara – technically, I admit, a commercial vehicle – I was approached by a member of staff and told I couldn’t dump my son’s old mattress without a permit!

He handed me an application form which I have since completed and sent to County Hall in the hope that they send me, as I understand it, a book of eight numbered vouchers which allow me to visit the skips eight times during the year.!” http://archive.eveshamjournal.co.uk/2007/7/10/474068.html

“In another situation regarding rubbish, a friend took an old three-piece suite to the tip in his van. He’s a florist and the van has a sign written on it; he was not allowed to tip the suite because he was in the van. As you can gather, it would not fit in his car!” http://archive.eveshamjournal.co.uk/2007/7/2/472846.html

“READING last week’s Journal, I came across the story of fly tipping, Well I never! The Wychavon Council has got it wrong again, did they expect it not to happen, what now, with people having to have permits and licences, and the landfill tax going up it was bound to happen. When I go to the tip, all I get is, is it commercial waste or from home, does it matter ?” http://archive.eveshamjournal.co.uk/2007/5/10/464036.html

From an economic risk/reward point of view, the current system seems to actively encourage fly tipping and ensures that this particular crime, certainly pays.

In 2006 there were just 24,460 prosecutions out of the 2,425,081 fly-tipping incidents. This means that just 1 in every 100 fly-tipping incidents results in a prosecution.
http://www.countryside-alliance.org.uk/rural-services/rural-services-campaigns/fly%11tipping-%11-the-facts-and-the-law/

So the average cost to the criminal of fly-tipping is 1% (1/100) of the average fine.

The average fine for the more serious flytipping offences is £3,298. (More serious being at least a truck load)
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/localenv/flytipping/flycapture-data.htm

In other words:

A serious criminal fly tipper’s average cost, every time they tip a load illegally is just £32.98

For a legal operator. the current landfill tax is £24 a tonne and a truck load of waste can carry up to 20 tonnes)
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/localenv/flytipping/pdf/flytipping-causes.pdf

The legitimate cost of waste disposal, every time a load is legally tipped is up to, an incredible, £480.00

It is nearly 15 times as expensive to dispose of waste legally, even taking into account fines for getting caught.

If we make it increasingly more difficult and more expensive to dispose of waste legally, then we should not be surprised when we get an increase in fly tipping !

The answer to the fly tipping problem is simply to reverse the conditions that lead to it, i.e.:

“Make the legitimate disposal of waste cheaper and more convenient”

1) Eliminate the red tape that makes legitimate waste disposal inconvenient

2) Increase the opening hours of legitimate waste disposal sites

3) Either raise the detection rates and fines facing fly tippers to increase the cost of illegal activity OR reduce the costs of legitimate disposal to reduce the financial incentive that drives fly tipping.
(Stop the crime from paying and the crime will stop)

http://archive.eveshamjournal.co.uk/2003/3/27/219257.html

James Hickman

PS: Just in case you are curious as to why so much fly tipping in the area consists of tyres, you can trace this back to goverment policy as well:

In 2003 the EC Landfill Directive banned the land filling of whole tyres, thereby significantly increasing the disposal costs for this type of waste. A rare piece of published analysis by Oxford County Council showed that the costs of disposing of fly tipped tyres doubled in the year after the regulations came into force! http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/localenv/flytipping/pdf/flytipping-causes.pdf