Cutting the crap, and cheaper

Not the most thrilling topic I grant you, but I noticed something on Devonshire Road that probably isn’t new but that I was quite pleased to see and wondered why I haven’t seen it in more locations.

It also reminded me of a trip to southern Spain last year.

What was it?

Now I know it’s one of the worst photos ever, but these are public litter bins for cans, bottles and paper. They are located next to the Total garage on Devonshire Road.

As you know, homes currently have up to four wheelie bins for the various connotations of waste, resulting in multiple bin collections collecting different bins on different days. This also means that you can only output one wheelie bin full of each particular type of waste between fortnightly collections.

I rented a villa in Calahonda in Spain last year and instead of wasting money handing out endless wheelie bins to people, they have large communal wheelie bins and proper sized bottle banks within easy walking distance of almost every home.

This means their collection trucks have to pick up smaller numbers of bins and pick up large quantities of waste in each one. Not only that, it means that each home doesn’t have to find a home for an armada of wheelie bins.

The best part for me is that you can deposit as much waste as you like, when you like. There’s no need for fly tipping or running down the street to put your rubbish in someone else’s bin. No stupidity of getting your bin back because it was deemed too heavy by some jobsworth.

Bins are collected frequently enough for the communal bins not to overflow.

The whole system seems an awful lot more efficient than the type of thing we get in Britain, but I’m of the view that refuse collection is seen not just as an essential service but as another means of employing people and another means of taxing people.

As I covered in an earlier post, Fylde and Wyre are spending hundreds of thousands on even more technology to employ the chip and bin system, which actually records how much you recycle and how much you don’t as a precursor to taxing you. Their agenda is fairly clear, and since Blackpool bins already have chips in them I think it’s fair to assume we’re getting it next.

In Spain, 60% of the population is served by private refuse disposal contractors. The rest are served by public-private schemes that operate in the same market as the private companies. This gives an indication perhaps of why their service isn’t dominated by recycling-obsessed taxaholic local authorites, and delivers more for less to their taxpayers.

Communal bins of the type that I saw on Devonshire Road would be a good step towards lessening the burden on people for pre-sorting and storing their own refuse – if they were massively deployed.