Guest blog: Options for securing a reliable and sustainable waste and recycling service
This blog comes from Councillor Martin Fodor who sets out the options being presented to councillors next week to consider ways of securing reliable and sustainable waste and recycling services for our city.
Over the past ten years, our daily lives have changed while the city around us has grown. More people working from home, the rise of streaming, and the huge growth in online shopping are just few of the lifestyle changes in the past decade. These changes have shaped new habits and needs, and that affects what households expect and need from council services.
One big change is the type and amount of waste we produce. Lifestyle changes, a growing population, and new retail practices mean more packaging and different materials. As the council responsible for managing this waste, we need to adapt so our services keep up with Bristol’s needs. So, it’s time to review and update our collection services to make them fit for the future.
On Thursday 18 December, the Environment and Sustainability Policy Committee will consider options for how we can do this. Across three reports to the committee, details relating to future options for what services are needed for the future, how these services will be delivered and investing in the vehicles needed to ensure we have reliable and effective services.
To get here, we’ve listened to residents and set up a dedicated group of councillors and officers to consider multiple views on many issues you raised and your concerns. During our recent consultation people told us what matters most for waste and recycling, what materials they want to recycle more, and how often collections should happen.
Our recent survey shows that residents care about recycling, but they also value clean streets, parks, and public spaces just as much. To support this, councillors will look at proposals for extra fly-tip collection rounds and a new community fund aimed at encouraging neighbourhoods to recycle more, in turn helping keep our streets cleaner and free from litter. We want to work with residents and groups to make sure no one is disadvantaged by any potential changes to future services.
Reliability is another priority. Missed collections due largely to ageing and undersized cardboard storage on trucks causes frustration, so options include modernising the fleet and redesigning collection routes to make services more dependable. At the same time, quieter, electric and low-emission vehicles are being pursued as an option, to reduce noise and air pollution in residential areas.
These priorities, as well as the need to recycle more and waste less as a city, are woven throughout the proposals councillors will now consider.
The cost of delivering our services must also be factored in. These costs have been rising and materials we could recycle can earn income to pay for the service; if disposed or incinerated they add to our costs.
We’ve also looked at new government rules that require councils to recycle more, reduce landfill, and meet strict targets. These rules include significant financial penalties for sending waste to be incinerated.
So, what does this mean for households? In short, you should expect the weekly recycling services that are more reliable, make it easier to recycle possible materials with new, bigger storage bags that causes less litter, and help you reduce waste.
Think back ten years. What were you buying, and how was it packaged? How did you dispose of that packaging? Today, our teams collect far more cardboard than before due mostly to more online purchasing. We’re currently dealing with double the cardboard we used to collect meaning vehicles can frequently be overloaded with card and must travel away to empty this while still having plenty of capacity for all the rest of our recycling. This is a significant cause of uncompleted and delayed rounds.
You might also notice more soft plastic – thin, flexible packaging like bread bags and wrappers – in your home. In future with a potential new recycling fleet it will be possible to recycle through the weekly collection service.
Technology and tighter regulations mean more materials can be recycled than ever before. Items like nappies and hygiene products, which were almost impossible to recycle a decade ago, can now be cleansed, processed and turned into new materials such as road surfacing and signage.
These changes in the waste materials being produced by households and advancements in technology mean we must adapt to meet these changing needs and where possible offer new services where we can beneficially direct useful materials into industry. Currently 85 % of recyclables collected go to British recycling plants but so far this material is only around 45% of household waste – we can do better.
The options councillors will consider reflect all these factors, plus months of analysis by our task and finish group. Nothing is decided yet, and no decisions will be made until councillors meet on 18 December, but it’s clear we need a firm plan for future services that caters for how we deliver them and adapt to meet Bristol’s changing needs.
