Bristol City Council has decided to drop the four-weekly black bin collection plan after facing major criticism.
Whilst the four-weekly bin collection was never written into policy, even rumours of such a proposal caused a ruckus amongst the student body and the wider Bristol public.
The Green Party, which runs Bristol City Council, put forward the idea in a public consultation in January and it was due to be debated on yesterday (11th March).
The idea was leaked in November and faced immediate backlash from frustrated Bristol residents.
The cross-party petition on the proposal has now been shelved but had received more than 12,000 signatures opposing the monthly collections plan.
It is not clear that there was ever overwhelming support for the policy amongst Green councillors.
Intel of the proposal came from a leaked document that the Local Democracy Reporting Service, a public service news agency funded by the BBC, obtained.
The controversial idea was put forward – among others – in a public consultation to crack down on food waste going in the wrong bins.
If it went ahead, the change would have made Bristol one of the first cities in Britain to move to a monthly bin collection; a hallmark of the city’s Green local government.
The switch to a four-weekly collection would have also saved the council £2.3million. This would have eased the financial strain on the council, especially in light of the city’s ever-expanding student body, the vast majority of whom do not pay council tax.
Now the plans have been dropped, council-run Bristol Waste is forecast to lose £800,000 this year.
Bristol Waste say that a fifth of Bristol households have been hit by “unacceptable levels” of missed bin collections, with residents facing prolonged waits for collection.
Martin Fodor, Chair of the Environment Committee said: “The four-weekly option was put in the consultation as an outlier for modelling purposes and I made clear it was always unlikely to go ahead.
He went on to add that “based on what we’ve heard and the strength of feeling that this has generated across the city, the Greens will not be supporting any proposals put forward to move to four-weekly collections at this time.”
Tom Renhard, Labour leader on the council, said the policy would be “totally unworkable” and that “the Greens dropping it will be a relief to all”. This feeling of relief is certainly felt amongst the student body.
