City's four-weekly bin collections idea 'dropped'

Support has been dropped for a plan to make Bristol the first major city in England to collect black waste bins every four weeks.

The Green Party, which runs Bristol City Council, put forward the controversial option - among others - in a public consultation in January to crack down on food waste going in the wrong bins.

The council previously said about a quarter of most black bin rubbish was food which could be recycled.

Councillors were due to debate a cross-party petition on the issue on Tuesday.

The petition, created by the council's Labour Party, called for the proposed changes to be shelved.

It has been signed by more than 12,000 people.

Currently, black bins in Bristol are collected every two weeks but a public consultation had proposed a series of changes to improve falling recycling rates - including cutting collections to either once every three weeks or once every four.

Many English local authorities already have three-weekly collections.

Switching to a three-weekly black bin collection would save the council £1.3m a year while a four-weekly collection would save £2.3m, the council had previously said.

The move comes as council-run Bristol Waste is forecast to lose £800,000 this year.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service said the company was struggling to balance the books because of the falling price of recycled materials.

According to Bristol Waste's shareholder business plan, a fifth of Bristol households have been hit by "unacceptable levels" of missed bin collections.

Residents of some streets have regularly waited days to have their recycling collected, according to the report.

Councillor Martin Fodor, chair of the environment committee, said: "The four-weekly option was put in the consultation as an outlier for modelling purposes and I made clear it was always unlikely to go ahead.

"Based on what we've heard and the strength of feeling that this has generated across the city, the Greens will not be supporting any proposals put forward to move to four-weekly collections at this time."

Councillor Tom Renhard, Labour leader on the council, said: "It has been clear from the start that this policy is totally unworkable.

"The Greens dropping it will be a relief to all, particularly those with larger families or newborns, who need fortnightly black bin collections."

He added: "Waste and recycling collection is the one service that every council tax payer uses and relies upon; it needs to be protected from their cuts."

The results of the public consultation, which ended on Monday, will be presented to a cross-party group of councillors who will decide on any changes at an unknown date.

Additional reporting by Alex Seabrook from the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

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