Thousands of Bristol homes to get recycling sacks instead of boxes
Instead of separating rubbish into boxes, residents will put all dry recycling into one orange sack
Thousands of Bristol residents will be given recycling sacks to put their rubbish in instead of separating it into boxes.
8,000 homes along main roads and in the city centre will be given an orange sack, which all dry recycling should be thrown into.
The changes planned by Bristol City Council will affect homes like flats above a shop, where there is little space on busy pavements to store recycling boxes. Bin bosses have looked at best practice on red routes in many parts of London, in a bid to clean up shopping streets.
An update on the changes was given to councillors on area committee 7 on Tuesday, September 23. These will happen independently of the proposed switch to a three-weekly collection for black bins, with a decision on that change due to be made this December.
Ken Lawson, the council’s head of waste and recycling, said: “What we’re proposing is a sack collection, where we have one sack for all dry recycling. We’ll collect waste in a different way that will hopefully lead to less street scene issues. It’s a positive step to address properties across the city that have maybe been under-serviced and also caused disproportionate issues.”
The changes are expected to cost £440,000, paid for by a government from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Affected roads include East Street, North Street and Stapleton Road. Properties there would also get a weekly black bin collection, in black sacks instead of bins, and weekly food waste collections in small brown caddies.
The roll-out of the new orange sack regime is expected to take place between April and June next year. A list of all the properties has already been prepared, but not yet published. Mixing all recycling together, known as ‘co-mingling’, was what used to happen in many parts of the country before residents were asked to separate their materials into different boxes.
While easier, the drawback of co-mingling is that recycling then has to be separated later on, before the different materials can be sold on to packaging producers. This process is expensive and less efficient than getting residents to do it. And the price the council can get for selling recycled materials then affects how much money can be spent on improving bin collections.
Earlier this year the council consulted the public on a controversial plan to collect general waste in black bins every three or four weeks, instead of every fortnight. Councillors are now discussing the results of the consultation, before deciding what to do next. The Greens, who lead the council, have ruled out a four-weekly collection regime, with three-weekly looking likely.