I wrote to Cambridge City Councillor Colin Rosenstiel today following his apparent claim that food waste is currently collected weekly in the city:
Cllr Rosenstiel,
In an article published earlier today on the Cambridge Liberal Democrat website entitled: “Lib Dems attack Tory’s £1.2m plan for weekly rubbish collections” you are quoted as saying:
The city council already makes two refuse collections every week from every household and collects rotting food on a weekly basis.
This is clearly nonsense. I live in Cambridge and, in line with the Council’s instructions I put my food waste in a green bin which is collected every other week. According to the city council’s website your green bin is collected every other week too.
Are you under the impression the council’s advice is to put food waste in whichever bin is due to be collected soonest? This is not the case.
As the executive councillor for environment and waste services I would expect you to have a firm understanding of how often green bins in Cambridge are collected.
I look forward to an explanation, or correction of the quote and article – whichever is appropriate.
[…]
—
Richard Taylor
Cambridge
I have previously written about split green bins in Cambridge.
I have taken a screen shot of the article at the time of writing:
Click to enlarge image.
4 responses to “Weekly Green Bin Collections?”
Cllr Rosenstiel replied within minutes of my email. He responded specifically to my question of if he believed the council’s advice is to put food waste in whichever bin is due to be collected soonest saying:
I would suggest this advice be given to all, not just those who complain to the council. I think that clear advice is needed especially now some UK councils have started fining people for not sorting their rubbish.
None of the leaflets on recycling I have received from the council say I can put food waste in my black bin. I note the council’s website does have a page on “Bin Hygiene” which includes the statement:
I noticed your posting on green bins today. To be fair to Colin Rosenstiel he has often said that people should put their food waste in the black bins on alternate weeks. (I don’t recall whether this is an unqualified suggestion.) I believe the city council website offers similar advice.
However, in my view this only goes to demonstrate how increased collection frequencies could actually increase recycling rates. Not that this would be a foregone conclusion, I admit, hence why our proposal would not be compulsory for local authorities:
http://cherryhintonroad.blogspot.com/2008/09/bring-back-weekly-bin-collections.html#c6258413069838994144
Yours,
Andrew
The council are quietly running a consultation on recycling in the City.
… which doesn’t include the option of weekly collections.