Several months before we switched over, we knew that there were changes coming, but there was very little detail available until a couple of months before the change over was implemented. Wanting to plan where to keep the various new recycling bags and boxes, I asked for information on their sizes, to no avail. There were some 'demonstration sessions', although I found out about the local ones the day after they happened, so along with many others, didn't appreciate the size and shape of the new box and bags until they arrived on the doorstep at the end of October.
Or not. Some properties were still chasing their receptacles in the first week of the scheme.
Some properties, such as blocks of flats, are not on the new scheme. A friend of mine lives in one of them, and tried to check where her new boxes were, or whether her location was exempt, but never did get an official reply, only finding out in conversation with her neighbours when none of them received boxes. It's just as well; I can't imagine how she would lug all the various bits up and down stairs, although at least she has a bin shed in an outside block. That's more than another friend of mine in a rented maisonette, which effectively has a small space in a front porch.
The driving force behind all of this is the need to clean up our act in the face of the global crises of climate and waste, reduce our use of plastics, stop landfill, with its use and pollution of land and production of greenhouse gases. The aim is for Wales to become a 'zero waste' nation by 2050. In 2017, Wales exceeded its target of 58% recycling, managing 63-64%. There is a target to recycle 70% of waste by 2025 and Wales is well set to achieve that, but some counties are better at it than others. Pembrokeshire was meeting the targets and improving, but not exceeding them, hence the need for changes. Councils face fines if they fail to meet their targets.
This wasn't really a big change, although it does seem to have caused a disproportionate amount of upheaval.
We previously had a green caddy for food waste, orange bag for recyclables (plastic bottles, cans, foil, card and paper) collected weekly; a green box for glass bottles and jars, and black plastic bags (which we had to buy ourselves, although a few years ago, they were provided by the council) for anything else - the 'residual waste', collected fortnightly. There is also an optional subscription for a wheelie bin for garden waste. Some supermarkets took (and still take) things like old plastic carrier bags, batteries and printer ink cartridges and the tip, sorry, 'waste and recycling centre', could take pretty much everything else, some of which is recyclable, such as electricals, lightbulbs and rags. (I knew that wearable clothing and shoes were collected, but rags and worn-out footwear was news to me.)
Now, we have kept the food waste caddy, the optional garden waste subscription and the glass box, although the latter is now emptied weekly along with the other recyclables. There is a new service with purple bags for nappies, incontinence pads and the like, collected fortnightly, for which users register. The orange bag has been replaced by a blue lidded box for (clean, dry) paper, a blue weighted woven plastic bag for (clean, dry) card and a red weighted woven plastic bag for plastics (all sorts of recyclable plastic bottles, boxes and trays except for brown or black plastics, and excluding plastic bags, wrappings and films), tetrapaks, cans, foil. We can also put out batteries for recycling in a separate (ziploc, plastic) bag. Once every three weeks, we can put out 'residual waste', now in council-supplied grey bags, which are not opaque, so recyclables carelessly tossed into the residual waste can be spotted. We get the equivalent of 52 bags, one per week, and 'a household' can put out a maximum of three bags at a time, although large households can get additional green bags and put one of those out per collection too.
We have new, big, colourful bin lorries with a number of holes down the side. And for many people, their bin day changed.
Changes. Oh deary me. People are largely resistant to change, and when changes are made which people find difficult, impractical and onerous in terms of time and energy, there will be problems.
When changes are planned and implemented, communication is key. There was some drip-feeding and a demonstration at the county show (for those who could afford to go!). Eventually, we received an information pack through the door, which included a glaring mistake in the collections calendar for some areas, including mine. (And, I later learned, other mistakes.) What, no proofreading? Evidently not.
It soon became clear how inconsistent and unclear some of the information was, and together with queries about missing information packs, boxes, bags and so on, the Council became overwhelmed by calls for information, as they didn't have enough staff with enough information to keep up with demand. People calling the council would find themselves queued, then their call would be cut off before they even got into the queue's single figures. The website was not easy to read (e.g. an infographic of what was recyclable where, but which was too small to be legible and wouldn't click-expand). Many people were concerned about the size and number of containers, and were asking how and where they were going to store all this. This generated a good discussion with people sharing ideas, but implicit in the question was another, to the Council: 'You've created this issue, what's your suggested solution?' The council's condescending answer was that it was 'up to you where you keep them'.
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| The various recycling containers take up half my (small) kitchen floor. The orange bags hanging on the door handle are for theTip or Terracycle charities |
A grey bag has replaced the black one in the kitchen bin, which holds the door from the kitchen to the utility room open. It's an unsightly nuisance, but in a small 1950s kitchen, there's no other place for it. I still have an orange bag in the undersink cupboard for the recyclables, which would go into the blue box, blue sack and red sack. On a Thursday evening, I bring them in and sort the contents of the orange bag into them. I don't always put out the glass box and don't always have batteries or food waste, because all the fruit and veg peelings and cores, cat litter, tea bags, coffee grounds, household dust go to make compost, as well as garden waste and some paper and cardboard. I bought a wheelie bin when I moved here, to hold any black bags between collections, so that now holds grey bags until collection day. I bought it on special offer, and it's become as essential as my compost bins.
It takes me about 20 minutes to sort everything and take it out. At least I just have to carry it through and out onto the front drive, but that can take 3 or four trips if it's a week when everything goes out. After that, my knees are generally screaming at me to sit down!
Depending on how full my orange bag is, some weeks I don't bother to put anything out. It's not worth it to have such a small amount in each sack, which despite being weighted, get soaked and blown away in a windy, rainy Pembrokeshire winter. I sit the blue box on top of the sacks to try to keep them down, but that gets blown off too. My garden wall and driveway don't provide enough protection from a blustery wind. One week, my blue sack disappeared. A neighbour found it had been blown into her driveway (three doors down across the road!) and put it by her wall, too late to be emptied, but at least it wasn't so full (and the cardboard therein not too wet) that I couldn't cram it into my wheelie bin and put it out the following week.
When the bins are emptied, they are left open to the weather, so I often have to tip water out of the blue box and shake the worst of it off the weighted sacks before putting them away. They are often still wet when I bring them in the next week, leaving wet and dirty puddles on the kitchen floor. I tell myself the floor has to be cleaned sometime, and a Thursday night is as good as any. If I were teaching on Thursday nights, I'd resent coming home tired and having to clean the floor as well as sort the rubbish. It makes me wonder, how many people don't go out to an evening class, simply because they are already tired from work and feeling the pressure of housework?
All in all, I'm not having significant issues with the new bin scheme, but I do wonder sometimes at the apparent lack of consistency. One week my glass box was left unemptied, although everything else was taken. I just took it and put it back out the following week, when it was emptied. Some weeks, the sacks are folded neatly into the blue box, with its lid tucked upright into it, to show they're all empty, and they are placed neatly back by my garden wall. Other weeks they are just tossed back down again. Did some people on the crews not get the message to leave things tidy, does the crew include someone who just can't be bothered, or is it someone trying to keep up with the lorry?
The 'new scheme' has now been running for nearly four months; enough time, surely, to resolve teething troubles and straighten out the kinks, but many issues have still not been resolved.
Some people found slashes on their rolls of grey bags, and find they can split easily. Now some are finding that they are running out already, having had to double-bag or otherwise discard the split bags, reducing their usable quota. Several people had their grey bags nicked from their doorsteps, and haven't all successfully had them replaced. The council allows more bags to be bought, but they are expensive, and considering that people aren't allowed to put out more than the equivalent of one grey bag per week (thus no more than three on the three-weekly collection) I would have thought the council could allow those with issues not of their own making some replacement bags.
There have been many complaints from people saying they are putting more in the grey sacks and recycling less, although on inspection, it seems many people were formerly putting the wrong things in their orange bags. Much of that was plastic with a recycling symbol on it, but which the council didn't take. They now take a lot more, but not plastic films.
The other aspect of 'putting more into the grey bags' is that they are in fact larger than many of the old black bags, and if you pack your plastic film down, you can indeed get more in without exceeding the weight limit.
There is a perceived increase in the amount of rubbish blowing about, whether from split sacks or escaping on the wind as the waste crews empty the sacks and boxes.
More receptacles means more wet and dirty bags and boxes to deal with. The holes in the bottom of the paper box let in water. The woven sacks have a flap which folds over as a lid/top, held down by Velcro closures, but they're not sealed and rainproof. Some sacks were very badly made, with stitching coming apart and misaligned sections, which left large gaps and Velcro with unmatched hook to hook or loop to loop faces. The flap closure is unwieldy and the Velcro catches onto clothing, hair, skin, so that sorting into and doing up the bags can be an annoying, scratchy affair.
Some report finding cats and dogs (and possibly foxes) have peed or pooped on their sacks.
Bags and boxes have disappeared. Mistakenly taken, blown away by the wind, or nicked? The weighted sacks are heavy enough to be a problem for those with mobility issues, but not heavy enough to stay put in the wind. And the food waste caddies in particular, if they are just tossed down, especially when open, can shatter or be blown by the wind into the road, where passing cars can complete their destruction and leave shards of plastic around the place.
Finding replacement or additional sacks and boxes has been an issue, as stocks were low when demand was highest after the change over. Residents then have to find out where there is a stock of what they need, and go to pick it up; some have then found that the location ran out in the meantime. An absolute pain if you don't drive, and a surprising number of people here do not, often for reasons such as health issues or expense.
Missed collections can be reported, and they are supposed to be picked up the next day, but in practice it may be two or more days. Some people find in particular purple sacks can be left for a week or more after their scheduled collection date. (plus,when everyone knows what a purple sack is for, having them left outside is indiscreet and potentially embarrassing). Considering they can become quite smelly after a week, people are beginning to ask that the collection be weekly, as in the warmer weather, the smell could be awful from bags hanging around for the best part of a fortnight.
In the first couple of months, there was a process of tagging a sack or box with a label, to show it contained incorrect items. The idea was that the label would state what was wrong and if possible, take the recyclables and leave the incorrect item(s). Many found that the whole sack or box-full was left, and the the tag was blank, leaving the home owner with no clue why their refuse had been 'rejected' and having to organise taking it to the tip or finding some place for it until the following week, with the added issue of finding somewhere to put that week's recyclables.
Cardboard boxes are no longer just picked up; all card has to be folded or torn so that it fits into the 50 cm-cube blue sack. It's not really a problem for cereal and cat food boxes, but boxes from new furniture or moving house must now be taken to the tip.
Whatever the failings of the Council and their new processes, what has shocked me the most is people's attitudes. The selfishness and sense of entitlement are staggering!
The fire brigade saw an increase in bin fires, as some decided it would be simpler to incinerate their rubbish now that they couldn't put as many sacks out as they liked and couldn't be bothered to sort the recyclables. Some claim that since the grey sacks are generally incinerated, they are cutting out the middle man, ignoring the difference between an industrial-scale incinerator, with particulate capture and use of the generated heat, and their little garden bin. This includes burning plastics, using their garden incinerator on a fine day or when the smoke will blow into their neighbours' gardens or across a road or path, rather than into their own property. I don't object to incinerators in general; I have one, and use it to burn garden waste only in damp weather when my neighbours don't have any washing out, then tip the resulting wood ash onto the compost heap.
Some people are refusing to recycle, perhaps burning some things, or putting as much as they can into the grey sacks. They consider this reasonable, that they are punishing the Council for what they see as their unworkable scheme, especially if they have had experiences where their rubbish hasn't been taken, sacks tagged with no detail of what's wrong, with no response when they try to complain. Some are doing it in protest as they consider it the Council's job to sort their rubbish, others to protest that as the Council is not taking some items marked as recyclable (not that they used to take them!) then the whole idea is fundamentally flawed.
This type of all-or-nothing, over-reaction is also seen in posts where a little news is blown out of all proportion, complete with big-brother type conspiracy theories and escalation of fear and despondency. An example was some news that Denbighshire were trialling microchipping some food waste bins, 'to check that people are recycling their food waste correctly'. The problem with this was an assumption that if you don't put out a food waste bin regularly, then you are probably putting your food waste into the 'residual' waste, although of course, it could be that you compost your fruit and veg waste and don't eat meat, so no fat or bones to go. Suddenly, there was talk of people in Pembrokeshire being fined, ranting about 'big brother' and threats to withhold council tax payments.
Of course, the councils tasked with meeting their recycling targets will have to collect data to prove that they are doing enough, and finding solutions to policing and educating those who wilfully disregard the rules and cause problems.
Pembrokeshire Council started a new policy some time ago that black bags dropped at the tips, now formally the 'waste and recycling centres', would be inspected for recyclables. The general reaction to this was that it was none of their business what people choose to throw away and a certain hysteria that the Council would pass their fines for insufficient recycling onto the people who fail to recycle. (Though in some respects, that sounds like a good idea to me. Why should anyone refuse to recycle what they can?)
There are a number who are climate change deniers and/or those who don't see why they should change their lifestyle and take no personal responsibility for their consumption and the waste they create.
There is also a perceptible increase in fly tipping, on which the council has now declared war.
There are also variations on the typical fly-tipping of rubbish in the wild - some rubbish in black/orange bags has been dumped with household rubbish, particularly galling for any householder who finds that some bags have been slyly added to their neat stack, and then left by the bins team for them to deal with. Bags of mixed rubbish are also left for the Terracycle recycling for charity company Pembrokeshire Care, Share and Give. They rely on volunteers to sort and pack the types of recyclables which the Council doesn't take but can be returned to specialist recyclers in return for money to charities. Adding unnecessarily to their work and leaving them with additional rubbish, especially when some of it contains disgusting and potentially dangerous items, is outrageous and has pushed them to the edge of closing some of their drop-off points.
Bags of all colours, shapes and contents are also being left next to rubbish and recycling bins in public areas. Some of the bins have now been removed. This is a typical Council response to the misuse and abuse of facilities - removing or closing them so that no one has use of them because of vandalism and abuse by a minority, punishing everyone for the misdeeds of the few.
This was an opportunity to look at the quantity and type of waste we produce, and educate our children too about the ecological impacts of waste and consumption, and for us to make changes, big or small, as and when we can. It's such a shame that some people are just too selfish, short-sighted and stupid to realise that we all need to do our bit for the world in which we live.
Links for further exploration
https://www.recycleforwales.org.uk/recycling-knowledge/turning-welsh-waste-energy/one-wales-one-planet
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/11/wales-household-waste-recycling-england
https://www.terracycle.com/en-GB/about-terracycle/recycle_your_waste?utm_campaign=admittance&utm_medium=menu&utm_source=www.terracycle.com
https://myrecyclingwales.org.uk/local_authorities/pembrokeshire?finyear=2018
https://www.facebook.com/pembrokeshirecareshareandgive/
1 comment:
Wow! I can visualise steam coming out of your ears...
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