Well, l can tell you now that this week was always going to be rubbish.
Seriously, l am featuring one pile of street ‘crap’ a day from around Bath.
This city has seriously got to discuss and consider how it collects refuse from its citizens and what rules it lays down for how refuse is prepared for collection.
Bath is constantly splattered with muck from ripped bags.
Let’s start with some business waste – just across the road from the Guildhall!
Onto Tuesday and a little overspill in Larkhall.
B&NES and Bath BID are going to trial an experimental FASTER collection to see if they can reduce the number of bags pecked open by gulls – but maybe it’s the sack that should be changed.
Rubbish needs to be put in something that is gull and vandal proof. While the whole business of collection needs to be reconsidered – including how to stop people putting out rubbish the day before too!!
Well said Richard! It depresses me to think what impression it gives visitors to our beautiful city. I frequently use the council ‘Report it’ link, regarding repeat offenders, some of whom start putting out bags 5 days before collection! But little seems to happen… maybe a few highly publicised prosecutions might help? Thanks for pursuing this.
As a relative newcomer to this lovely city, it really distresses me to see such a lot of rubbish lying around, which looks awful and contributes to the gull problem. Can nothing be done to enforce the use of gull-proof bags or similar. Surely a World Heritage City shouldn’t be such a ‘tip’.
[Sorry, long post incoming…]
The simple solution is to reduce exposure time. The less time that the bags are on the streets then the less time the seagulls have to attack them. Plus attacked or intact, bin bags don’t look great and especially in a World Heritage City, so the less time they’re out on the streets the better.
When looking up my address the BANES website tells me my collection day, but for timings it just tells everyone the same:
“Put out your recycling and rubbish at the edge of you[r] property closest to the highway between 8pm the night before and 7am on the day of your normal collection day.”
On a typical day I’ve observed that the bin lorry usually comes to me at about 12 noon. Now here the problem where I am is mainly foxes and not gulls, but nevertheless following the BANES advice would mean that my bags are out on the streets for 5 to 16 hours before the lorry comes. So instead choose I ignore the BANES advice, don’t put the bags out the night before, and don’t rush to get them out for 7am. If I’m in during the day, I’ll even delay putting them out until mid-morning. Therefore the bags are out for the minimum time possible before the lorry comes. Obviously it all falls down if no-one’s at home during the day, but a quick win for the council would be to update the postcode search with the typical time the lorry actually comes.
Regarding the usual moan of people putting out bags the night before (and ignoring that the council website endorses doing so)…
I’d assume people are probably doing so for a reason. Perhaps 7am is too early for them to get up (no prizes for guessing that I’m talking about Students!). Or perhaps in the morning’s people are in a rush for work and are wearing their nice suit so don’t want the time & mess of dealing with the bins and would rather do it the night before. Or for business premises, maybe they can’t get a member of staff there for 7am.
Now there’s a whole other rant to be had about how the council’s purpose is to serve the public rather than dictate, but anyways moving on…
Have we ever considered night time collections? Going by the people putting out bags the night before, people seem to want it. Not that I’m a bird expert, but according to Wikipedia “Most types of seagull are awake during the day and sleep at night.”. Having the bags put out in the evening and collected overnight also solves the unsightliness problem too. Collections would be quicker as the bin lorries have the roads to themselves and aren’t getting caught up in the traffic. And daytime traffic might also be better without the contribution of bin lorries constantly stop-starting. Also as we saw in 2014 in Glasgow with the bin lorry and in Bath last year with the bus, heavy vehicles don’t mix well with pedestrians.
Well reasoned Edward and l hope councillors read it right through to the end.