£250 Million for weekly bin collections!

This weeks Bracknell Standard question was "Councils now have the opportunity to return to weekly bin collections after the Government put aside £250 million to help councils go back to the weekly system but councils must sign up for a minimum of five years to receive the money. In Bracknell, council leader Councillor Paul Bettison has not ruled out the possibility but fears it may lead to spiralling costs.

"Would you like to see a return to weekly bin collections, or do you feel the fortnightly collections are okay? The council says statistics show people may not be able to organise themselves for weekly bin collections, do you agree with this?"

 

And my reply;

 

I believe my own local party (Lib Dems) support the idea of a weekly bin collection. However I'm not as keen. I understand that this is a very emotive issue, I myself fall on the bi-Weekly bin collections side of the argument. I don't think its right that the coalition have found £250 million to spend on bins when this could be better spend on many other things should as elderly care or children's services or social housing.
 
Some people also don't believe in recycling and this is a way of forcing them to use it as you need to use that second blue bin thereby ensuring that recycling is done.
 
Then again I don't get so upset about the bin issue as others, I think there are many far more important things to worry about. After all if we only have the bins to worry about then life can't be that bad, can it?

 

 

What do you think?

Local Blog: Daily Mail rubbishes Bracknell and Wokingham's bin spies

I'm always amazed at how upset the Daily Mail gets about the subject of rubbish. It would appear however that there is an element of truth to their story on council race spies secretly rummage through rubbish bins to discover families' habits see here.

I'm really not sure why the Daily Mail thinks this is about race as claimed in the article 'Often, officials deliberately picked streets where different types of men and women lived to see if their ethnic origins, type of home or wealth affected the amount or rubbish they threw out'. I doubt this is even possible in Bracknell.

Bracknell council have admitted that they do employ companies who will empty some bins from a random location into a separate white van to find out if that area is recycling or not. They then send leaflets to that area. the council do claim that they are not spies and that no profiling is conducted of individuals or households. Still it must be tempting after all if you know where the bin came from you may know who throw the rubbish away incorrectly.

The same article also claims that 'Officials in Wokingham, Berkshire, went through the bins of almost 500 homes, identifying almost a ton of rubbish that could have been recycled'.

There are people going through the bins in both Bracknell and Wokingham. If this is not about profiling and includes helpful leaflets to given areas than I don't see a problem with it. But I would not want someone to know that I have thrown away something personal or any ID or data and to of know where it came from.

So if you do have anything that contains important data I would not throw it away in your local bins but have it shredded before hand.

See the Get Bracknell story
http://www.getbracknell.co.uk/news/s/2075306_council_staff_are_rummaging_through_your_bins