Fortnightly bin collections - I'll move on when you sort it out!

Posted By: Susan Emmott
Date Posted: 07/10/2007

At a recent meeting of the Heywood Environment and Safety Theme Group, Heywood Fire Chief, Mark O’ Brien highlighted the problems of increased fly tipping since the imposition of fortnightly bin collections in Heywood in June.

Mr. O’ Brien said, “With the introduction of alternate weekly collections we have seen an increase in identifying potential fires. People are finding alternative ways of disposing of their rubbish, and we have seen an increase in fly tipping in Heywood, in places such as Moor Street and by the garages in Furness Avenue” 

So, there we have it. A fire chief who is totally neutral in the debate about fortnightly collections has highlighted an increase in fly tipping since they were imposed in Heywood. This is a man with no political axe to grind alerting us to the possibilities of potential fires due to increased fly tipping. A man who is simply doing his job in a highly professional manner letting people in Heywood know about the potential dangers that fly tipping can cause.

Now, Wera Hobhouse would have us think that everything is hunky dory with her fortnightly collections and she constantly trots out her figures about how much recycling has increased since she reduced our refuse collection service in June. She says there has been no increase in fly tipping – but she obviously needs to heed the words of Heywood’s fire chief. Who should we believe – a politician defending her most treasured policy or a professional fire officer pointing out potential dangers to the public? I vote for Mr. O’ Brien on this one.

This week, somebody wrote a letter to the Heywood Advertiser complaining about more failures to collect rubbish in Heywood. The writer lives in a flat and attended one of Wera’s propaganda sessions at Morrisons supermarket in Heywood before the scheme started. They were told that because they lived in flats there was not enough space for the blue recycling bins, so they would just need to put out their normal green wheelie bin every fortnight. The writer of the letter has done just as the Council asked and guess what – the bins were not emptied. A total shambles!!

Still, there does seem to be some light at the end of the tunnel for one lady in my ward who recently was fortunate enough to have an “alternate daily collection”.  She lives in the rural part of my ward and is on what is known as “the hard to reach round”. Her green bin should have been emptied on Tuesday 25th September but nobody came to empty it. However, they managed to collect it 3 days later on the following Friday. The following week her blue recyclable bin was emptied on the Monday (correctly) but then to her surprise her green bin was emptied again on the day after on the Tuesday and then they even came back on the Wednesday to empty her recyclables again - even though her recyclables bin was virtually empty !

So, she was getting her bins emptied daily while others were not getting them emptied at all. There is a word for that – CHAOS!!!