Wiltshire rubbish bins will only be collected once every three weeks
Rubbish bins will only be collected once every three weeks, under new rules rubber-stamped by Wiltshire Council
Rubbish bins will only be collected once every three weeks, under new rules rubber-stamped by Wiltshire Council.
Members of the Liberal Democrat-run Cabinet met on Tuesday (December 9) to discuss a range of waste management issues, including bin collections, the future of household recycling centres, and how waste is treated once it has been collected.
During a four-hour debate – which often descended into blow-trading with their political rivals on the Conservative benches – a new bin collection regime was agreed.
In Spring 2027 Wiltshire Council will introduce two new recycling services – both of which they are legally obliged to do.
They will start to collect food waste, which will be collected once a week. Households will be provided with two caddies – a small one for the kitchen, and a larger one for roadside collection – along with an initial supply of caddy liners.
Flexible plastics will also be collected. The council will provide plastic sacks for items like crisp packets and bread bags. The sack of plastic should then be placed into the ‘blue’ recycling bin, which will be collected once a fortnight.
The council says the removal of food waste and soft plastics will dramatically reduce the amount of rubbish going into households’ ‘residual waste’ bins – and reduce the amount of waste the county sends to landfill.
For this reason, ‘black’ bins will be collected once every three weeks.
However, a scheme to ask households to further sort their recycling, with card and plastic being collected in a ‘red’ bin will not be pursued, after a trial in Chippenham in October was deemed not to have been a success.
“There is no point in conducting trials if we aren’t prepared to listen,” said Cllr Paul Sample, Wiltshire Council’s cabinet member for environment, climate and waste.
The move was heralded by Cllr Sample, who said the changes would increase the county’s recycling rate from 40 per cent to 65 per cent – propelling it from the bottom third of councils to the top tier.
However, concerns were expressed from the Conservative benches.
“Lots of the material that goes into residual waste is sanitary products, from nappies to incontinence products,” said Cllr Bridget Wayman (Nadder Valley, Conservative).
“To have collections every three weeks could become problematic.
“It’s also going to get very confusing for people.”
Cllr Sample agreed that sanitary waste could be a problem, and said he had asked officers to find out what councils elsewhere in England were doing about collecting sanitary waste.