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This article by Green Councillor and Chair of the Environment and Sustainability Committee Martin Fodor was originally published on Bristol 24/7 on November 4th 2024.
Collecting recycling is the most regular, universal service the Council offers and is one of the most important services we’re focussed on improving.
As chair of the Environment and Sustainability Committee, part of my role is to hold Bristol Waste to account and make sure the service they provide is dependable, effective and convenient.
But they face increasing challenges.
Every year more homes are built in Bristol, and these get added to existing collection rounds within the same budget.
Collecting recycling is the most regular, universal service the Council offers – photo: Bristol City Council
Increased online shopping means more cardboard, which fills recycling vehicles faster and means more trips across the city to empty them, further affecting reliability.
With council budgets shrinking year on year, the previous Labour administration wanted to make savings wherever they could.
But cutting these service costs isn’t easy.
Plans were drawn up last November to reroute the entire service to improve efficiency, covering almost 22 million collections a year.
Plans were drawn up last year that covered almost 22 million collections a year – photo: Stephen Sumner
The aim was to rebalance rounds, remove some crews and trucks, and reduce the knock-on effects that built up each week and hit Friday collections the worst.
But this rerouting encountered its own problems.
It ended up causing more missed streets, more complicated areas were not balanced with more straightforward areas and, crucially, having fewer crews on the road each day meant they could barely cope.
Bristol Waste brought in several more reroutings to try to tackle missed streets, but problems remained.
Having fewer crews on the road each day meant they could barely cope – photo: Bristol Waste
To try and address this, the Council has restored four more vehicle crews and added an extra evening round each day.
As chair of the Environment and Sustainability Committee, I could not prioritise budget savings over a dependable service.
It has been an enormous challenge – for inconvenienced residents as well as the Bristol Waste staff who are working hard to deliver the service that residents deserve.
I am hopeful our changes will bring improvements. I will be monitoring their effectiveness to ensure Bristol Waste is delivering the service we expect and deserve.
Bristol Waste staff are working hard to deliver the service that residents deserve – photo: Bristol Waste
As a Green politician, I believe that being open and honest with the public is vital.
In September I asked for a publicly-available report to come to my committee to explain the problems and causes of missed collections, say what was underway to address these and show how we were monitoring the issues and learning lessons.
Under the previous administration, information regarding problems in the waste and recycling service had not been made public.
I wanted us to be as transparent as possible about the problems we need to tackle to get the service back on an even keel.
We are facing up to the challenges and promise to do everything we can to find the best solutions for Bristol.
I wanted the Green Party to be as transparent as possible about the problems we need to tackle – photo: Rob Browne
I want a recycling service that Bristol can be proud of.
For many years, the city has actually had the best recycling rate of the ‘core cities’.
Our kerbside sorting system yields quality materials that go to market and, with the recent revelations about pollution from incineration, I’d like to keep it that way.
But too many valuable materials are still ending up in waste bins when they could be collected and sold to help pay for the service.
There’s still a lot more to be done to reduce, repair and reuse materials with partners in the city, too.
Going forward we need two things: improved reliability, and a better ability to deal with increasing volumes of plastic and cardboard, as well as high-impact wastes like food.
The people of Bristol deserve and expect this of us.
Main photo: Bristol Waste