Bristol Council Criticised for Introducing a Third Recycling Box

Bristol Council Criticised for
Introducing a Third Recycling Box

Bristol Council has been criticised for their decision to introduce an extra recycling box for households in the city. The decision follows a review into the council’s household waste collection strategy.

The resulting report recommended that general waste should only be collected every three weeks to cut down on the amount of waste that goes to the incinerator. The council’s cabinet dismissed this idea though, believing that it would be unpopular with residents. Instead, the cabinet proposed providing an extra recycling box to every household.

A former council cabinet member has written to the current cabinet saying that offering the extra container will clog up the streets and confuse residents, when the council has already spent a lot of time and effort explaining to people how to sort their waste in to black and green boxes they already have. The former councillor also spoke of her frustration that a more ambitious plan to increase recycling hadn’t been considered, since Bristol’s mayor has pledged to increase recycling to 55% by 2020.

The council hit back by saying it’s still committed to hitting their 55% target by 2020. The cabinet member for waste told the cabinet at a recent meeting that several initiatives had been introduced, including a campaign around food waste recycling which had been rolled out across the city in the last few weeks. He said that early results appeared promising and that it had won the ‘Best Campaign’ award at the National Recycling Awards last week.

Bristol’s food waste campaign

The average household in Bristol wastes around £60 of food every month, so Bristol Waste has launched a campaign to cut down on the amount of food waste going to landfill and encourage people to recycle their leftovers.

The ‘Slim My Waste – Feed My Face’ campaign launched across the city after a successful pilot scheme which resulted in an 80% increase in food waste recycling. Residents are asked to avoid putting food waste in their general waste bin and to decorate their brown bins with face stickers.

The recycled food is then turned into renewable energy and bio-fertilisers which are used in agriculture.

Residents who decorate their food waste bins can enter a competition every week to win a prize by sharing a picture of their creative bin decoration on social media using the hashtag #FeedMyFace.