25 May 2017
Bath Brouhaha Prompts A Look At Rubbish And Recycling
Global recycling day scheduled for 18 March 2018.
By Lynda Goetz.
I was rather fascinated by a seemingly trivial story which appeared in the national press this week concerning the residents of Tennyson Road in Bath. The story, featuring a picture attributed to the Bath Chronicle (where the story presumably originated) of a pleasant-looking road of terraced houses constructed of mellow Bath stone with minuscule front ‘gardens’, concerns the imposition of wheelie bins on the inhabitants. It is unclear what the arrangements have been hitherto (although it seems that those producing minimal rubbish have been able to ‘hang a bag from the railings’), but from November some three-quarters of residents in the area will be issued with 140L wheelie bins, whilst others will receive a re-useable gull-proof bag.
In Tennyson Road many do not consider wheelie bins suitable for their needs – even small ones (standard size are 240L) are 106cm high. It seems that Bath and Northeast Somerset Council did anticipate some objections to their plans and conceded that ‘one size does not fit all’, offering larger bins (for families) or reusable bags where property location may not be appropriate for wheelie bins. However, of the 1,500 applications for a change to the allotted receptacle, 435 have been rejected. It appears that you can have a larger receptacle if your family is larger, but you cannot refuse to have a wheelie bin altogether if the council deems the location ‘suitable’ for wheelie bin use. This is part of a council money-saving exercise which will apparently ‘improve the street scene’ of the Georgian spa city.
First of all, can anybody explain how forcing all residents to have wheelie bins parked in front of their house is going to ‘improve the street scene’? These front gardens are narrow strips. Where they are gardened there is certainly no room for large bins. Where they have already been paved, a tall wheelie bin is still going to be visible above the wall or railings. Wheelie bins, as the residents point out, are not objects of beauty. Could the problem perhaps be solved by keeping the bins at the back of the house? Well, possibly, but like a lot of terraced houses countrywide, these do not have any rear access. This would mean wheeling your bin through the house once a fortnight. Apart from the obvious lack of appeal in trailing a bin with dirty wheels across the carpets, there is also the problem, as some of the Tennyson Road residents have been quick to point out, that many of them are not in the first flush of youth and those with dodgy backs, hips and knees do not relish dragging a wheelie bin up and down steps, through doors and round corners.
This stand-off between residents and the local council does not give any clue as to whether these bins are to be for waste or recycling or perhaps both. One 140L bin actually seems small for either, especially if like most councils, Bath has reduced collections to being fortnightly. Either way, the whole issue is illustrative of the ongoing problem waste disposal presents and has indeed long presented to human populations all over the planet. Clearly, this problem has increased with the increasing population, industrialisation and urbanisation. Interestingly, London led the way in municipally-based waste management from the late 18th century onwards. Bearing out the old adage, ‘where there’s muck there’s brass’, the system was initially based on the fact that coal ash (‘dust’) had a market value. As this was, at the time, one of the main constituents of municipal waste and was used both in brick-making and as a soil improver, there was sufficient profitability for dust-contractors to operate – until the market collapsed in the mid-1850s.
Nowadays of course the profitability aspect of our waste collection is in the recycling, not of coal ash, but of packaging materials and paper. All the time this remains profitable then local authorities can continue off-setting the charges for landfill with payments received for the tonnes of recyclables now separated from the rubbish. The problem is that the increase in both people and packaging is exponential. Of course we are all very good about our efforts towards recycling and as long as the price for recycled cardboard, plastic, paper aluminium etc is above the processing costs then the system continues to work. However, prices for recycled glass have been depressed for years now and glass recycling frequently results in loss for companies, particularly as it represents a disproportionate amount by weight of the materials ending up at recycling facilities. Recycled paper has also been a problem in recent years. Whilst this used to be a money-spinner for recycling businesses, the lower quality of the contemporary product (partly owing to the reduction in newspapers and partly to contamination because of sorting systems) and the reduced demand from China has led to reduced prices.
17th May 2017 was apparently International Recycling Day, although you may be forgiven for not being aware of this. The event was so low key that it essentially passed unnoticed or, as LetsRecycle.com put it, ‘passed without fanfare’. However, the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR), an organisation of whose existence I was hitherto unaware, which will apparently celebrate its 70th anniversary on 18th March next year, is spearheading an initiative to promote a Global Recycling Day to take place on its anniversary. The head of BIR, Ranjit Baxi, wants recyclables to be recognised as the seventh most important natural resource (after water, air, coal, oil, gas and minerals). This is an interesting viewpoint, but until many more of us take a real interest and the retail industry as well as local and national governments and commerce become more involved, this is going to continue to be a very slow uphill battle.
From most householders’ point of view, recycling (unless you become a real convert) is tedious and irritating. It necessitates at the very least two bins for ‘rubbish’ inside the house (usually in the kitchen) and possibly even more outside. Depending on your local authority you may or may not have to sort the recyclables into categories. Broken glass, for example, can pose a problem in sorting. Although much sorting is done automatically, some is still done by hand, so householders are requested to clean or at the very least to rinse out all tins and containers. Then there is the food waste (another story) which many councils now collect separately for composting. All this is far more ‘work’ than simply chucking everything into one bin.
Whichever way one looks at it there seems to be an increasingly large amount of stuff to be thrown out. Although the management of waste may be more difficult in cities, and there is no doubt that wheelie bins littering the streets are both an obstruction and an eyesore, it is a problem too in the countryside. Unimaginative systems and schemes not properly thought through for dealing with waste result in a proliferation of plastic boxes outside many homes in some areas. Rigid plastic lids which cannot be closed on piles of uncrushable plastic containers frequently end up with broken closing mechanisms so becoming themselves an addition to the waste problem. By the end of a fortnight, it is a miracle if none of those uncrushable fruit containers or croissant boxes have not blown halfway down the lane.
There are some innovative and imaginative ideas out there to try and deal with both wasted food and excessive packaging. Rachel England in an interesting article for the Independent in March (Food Waste and Excessive Packaging) covers some of the scientific approaches being researched to deal with the issue, including dissolvable pods for holding things like oil or sauce. Her conclusion that perhaps the ultimate answer to packaging and food waste will eventually be provided by scientists finding ways of getting nutrients into us by methods such as skin patches or gum-chewing sounds far less appealing than putting up with a few unsightly wheelie bins or boxes overflowing with uncrushable plastic! However, the campaign to bring back the water fountain as a means of getting rid of the ubiquitous and costly (in more ways than one) bottled water may well be worth considering. Perhaps we might also have some more flexible and imaginative approaches from our local authorities, including a choice of size or style of waste containers, including tiered, stackable or even drawer-style, ‘depending on location’? Could the government perhaps note those councils with workable, successful waste and recycling management and promote those? Should we be looking to other countries to see how they are dealing with this problem? It is not unique to this country. This is a worldwide problem. By reducing it to the parochial, Bath is failing not just the local inhabitants but all of us.
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