Trade waste containers for licensed premises, shops and restaurants have been multiplying over the past few years, writes local resident John MacDonald, but most of them could soon be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Apart from the unsightly appearance of several brightly coloured bins clustered together, I have found from personal experience that their owners sometimes overfill them and subsequently ignore and fail to clean up any spill-over litter scattered about the area by scavengers.
So, I was pleased to note that City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) is now expanding its scheme to eliminate trade bins from publicly owned pavements and roadways.
The original pilot trialled on Rose Street, the High Street, and from March 2014 Leith Walk (Issue 226). It was extended to the Second New Town and parts of Broughton (down to Cornwallis Place) on 22 April 2015. A second tranche of Broughton (including the long troublesome Union Street and Broughton Street Lane) will follow from 15 July (see map below).
The bin replacement scheme will involve traders putting out their waste on a more regular basis for collection, presumably either bagged or caged. The main difference is that they will have a designated time window (just a few hours) to put out their rubbish.
Around the New Town and Broughton areas, CEC has now applied removal notices (adhesive stickers) to the bins that will need to be taken off the streets by the end of this month. (Bins on private land are not affected.)
Fines for not complying can be up to £1,000.
The new scheme will certainly require more care and attention from the few licensed premises, shops and restaurateurs who abuse the current system. But if it works, then our streets will be a lot tidier. Walking around Rose Street lanes you can certainly notice a difference where the former bins have been removed.
Attached at the foot of this page is a CEC pdf ‘Guidance about the changes’ which goes into more detail about the rationale for the new regime and how it is anticipated to work.
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JE Docherty Although (from experience) the council's rubbish collection department are by far the worst of all that operate in the city and i'm aware of a situation where one local shop was fined by the CEC enviromental wardens for CEC's rubbish collection department not collecting their bins when they were supposed to. Shop keepers are expected to watch rubbish from 6am to 8pm regardless of the agreed time.
I think the overfilling you talk of come from them not being collected when they're supposed to. For the most part businesses do as instructed and then either the bin isn't collected when it's meant to be for whatever reason and the knock on effect is that passers by see it as an opportunity to fly tip and do so.