Phase 6 of the Council’s Communal Bin Review (CBR) has begun. It looks at waste and recycling arrangements for 152 streets in those parts of the New Town, Stockbridge and West End within the World Heritage Site.
Full details of proposed ‘improvements’ are available online here. Responses are invited until 4 April and can be made online here. Depending on your point of view, that online consultation form is either refreshingly open to individuals' input or astonishingly vague and unstructured. It does not extend much beyond, 'Please use the box below to tell us anything about the Communal Bin Review.'
Final recommendations will likely be presented to the Transport & Environment Committee in May.
Of the 50 Spurtleshire streets covered by the CBR, 35 are proposed as retaining or converting to two Gull Proof Sacks per household (one for non-recyclable and one for dry mixed recycling), supplemented by food caddies and a plastic box for glass, small electronics and batteries. Cumberland and Scotland Streets are among those potentially converting to GPS.
Elsewhere, a total of 238 large side-opening bins (for non-recyclable waste) will be replaced by twice that number of smaller ones. The Council says, ‘These bins need to be removed due to difficulties with obtaining replacement parts for the bins and the vehicles which recycle them.’
Is this, as it sounds, a major procurement failure which should have been foreseen and avoided earlier?
Bespoke colour schemes will be applied to reduce the bin hubs’ visual impact on the World Heritage Site. Dark green lids on black bins (not entirely green bins) will be used for mixed recycling, black bins with purple flaps (rather than entirely purple bins) for glass, and the finish of retaining metal bars at each end of the hub will be black not chrome.
It remains to be seen whether the choice of colour and forced reduction in bulk will combine to reduce their supposed intrusiveness. However, it is unlikely that cosmetic changes will do much to appease those who abhor even the idea of communal bins.
Drop-in information sessions began late last month and will continue on:
- 5 March Palmerston Place Church, 15:00–19:00
- 7 March Stockbridge Library, 12:00–16:00
- 10 March The Dean Church, 17:30–20:00.
