\n Wiltshire Council’s environment select committee was discussing the results of a survey into the contents of people’s bins ahead of the roll-out of food waste and soft plastics recycling in 2027.\n<\/p>\n
\n The report found that the public would need to be educated on types of waste, and what bin they should be put in.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Where can we put dog poo then?” asked the Conservative member for Purton, who said she had been recycling since the 1990s.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Because an awful lot of people have that in their bins. Does that go into the food waste? Because that’s compost, you know.\n<\/p>\n
\n “And you know the dead guinea pig? Where do you put the dead guinea pig?\n<\/p>\n
\n “Those are the things that I think the public would like to know.”\n<\/p>\n
\n The council’s director of environment, Sarah Valdus, admitted she did not have a ready answer and promised to come back with one.\n<\/p>\n
\n The episode was part of an hour-long debate that literally lifted the lids people’s bins.\n<\/p>\n
\n A trial of 571 consenting households in an area of Chippenham found that just over half of the waste in people’s residual waste bin – the black\/grey rubbish bin – was made up of putrescibles; that is, material likely to rot.\n<\/p>\n
\n To the surprise of many councillors, around 10 per cent of the average rubbish bin consisted of paper and card, while 3.5 per cent was glass – both widely collected by English councils since the introduction of the Household Waste Recycling Act 2003.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I’m still surprised that there are people out there who say no to all this,” lamented Cllr Ross Henning, Liberal Democrat member for Chippenham Lowden & Rowden.\n<\/p>\n
\n And he wondered whether examining the contents of residents’ bins would be carried out going forward.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Are we going to be checking bins into the into the future, like a random check on a residual waste bin?” he asked.\n<\/p>\n
\n “We do carry out lifting lid spot checks within the recycling service, to see if things are in the wrong bin,” confirmed the service director.\n<\/p>\n
\n “You get an amber then red sticker that goes on the bin to give people advice,” she said. “We then send out letters. Then we offer to come and talk to them.\n<\/p>\n
\n “And then only would we ever go to the stage of saying your bin’s too contaminated and we can’t collect it.”\n<\/p>\n
\n The Chippenham trial, which was conducted last October, saw participating households issued with a new red-lidded bin for paper and card.\n<\/p>\n
\n Cllr Bill Parks, Conservative councillor for Warminster North & Rural, wanted to know what had happened to the red-lidded bins once the trial was over.\n<\/p>\n
\n He was assured they had been returned to the council’s contractor Hills Waste to be repurposed.\n<\/p>\n
\n And Cllr Kevin Asplin, Amesbury East & Bulford, Reform UK, wondered whether residents could be encouraged to compact their recycling to make better use of their bin.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I’ve got a tamper, which is basically a scaffolding pole with a large chunk of iron at the bottom,” he said. “I can take a full bin and turn it into a quarter full bin.\n<\/p>\n
\n “So rather than throwing around additional bins, why don’t you just uh give them tampers or compactors or give them some kind of training in how to compact waste?”\n<\/p>\n
\n A report of the results of the survey said that “No economic benefit from adopting a three-stream system was identified,” and the idea of issuing all households with an extra bin for paper and card was rejected.\n<\/p>\n
\n However, councils will be compelled to collect food waste and soft plastics by 2027, and the council’s head of waste management, Martin Litherland, confirmed that “each household will be issued with an annual supply of bags to put flexible soft plastics in. They are likely to be red in colour.”\n<\/p>\n
\n In a statement issued after the meeting, Cllr Ian Thorn, leader of Wiltshire Council, said \u201cWhen needing to dispose of a deceased family pet, we would recommend that people follow the RSPCA guidance and arrange for a cremation or, provided they own the land, bury it in their garden.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Using your general household waste bin should be a last resort, and where necessary the pet should be double-bagged and sealed securely.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Only small animals should be placed in the general household bin. Larger pets should be cremated or buried.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cDog poo should be bagged and placed in the general household waste wheelie bin. It should not be placed in recycling containers or garden waste bins.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wiltshire Council’s environment select committee was discussing the results of a survey into the contents of people’s bins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-478203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}