Birmingham accepts the challenge of 35% recycling target.
Birmingham City Council has decided to keep the 35% recycling target for the next year after talk it would be lowered to 30%. The council’s cabinet member for sustainability stated that the lower target was a recommended goal within the 2014/15 report on performance monitoring and was only that low due to a ‘technical error’.
The suggested lowering of the target called in to question the green credentials of the council and a verbal amendment to the report was made in order to clarify that the council had no intention of lowering the challenging target.
Why choose the high recycling target?
Originally, the lower target was suggested due to the city’s 2014/15 performance report due to the fall in household and municipal recycling across the city. The reduced amount has been blamed on a drop in green waste compositing with the amount lowering by 11,000 tonnes in 2014/15 in comparison to the previous year.
Although the council have taken a brave stance and accepted the higher target of 35%, they have announced there will be a 10% tolerance in meeting it. Did they only accept the higher one to save face know that this tolerance would allow them to meet 25%? The council have said that in order to reach the 35% they need to better understand changes in composting as they believe that a rise in this may have impacted on the final tonnages sum. It has also been mentioned that residents boycotted the green waste collection service due to now having to pay a £35 a year charge for it.
Why charge for green waste recycling?
The council will not want a repeat of last year when they were forced to do a green waste collection blitz after it began to pile up. Residents refused to pay the £35 garden tax and dumped their waste forcing the council to clean it up stating that they had a duty to maintain the cleanliness of neighbourhoods.
The council had to tread delicately so they didn’t upset those who had paid the fee to have their green waste collected. I’m sure many of us will agree that paying the fee and then seeing other who hadn’t paid the fee have their waste collected would be fairly annoying. However, the council do have a duty to ensure the neighbourhoods don’t deteriorate which could lead to even bigger problems.
Only 40,000 of the 400,000 households agreed to pay for the collection. The fee was introduced after scrapping the old free collection service due to complaints of piles of rubbish and long queues at tips.
Are you a resident of Birmingham – did you agree to pay the fee? Is the fee as good idea? The council state the fee was so they could concentrate on putting the money into other front line services. We’d love to hear what you have to say on the issue.