News / Bristol Waste
City’s rising rubbish collection woes
Adding to the city’s ongoing rubbish collection woes, Bristol Waste has announced further service changes to “catch up” with recycling collection delays.
In an update shared by the waste collection company on Thursday, residents were notified that the next Friday recycling collection scheduled for January 11 will no longer take place.
This is after several residents have complained about missed recycling collection or in some instances partial collection.
is needed now More than ever
Sharing concerns on Bristol Waste’s facebook page, a resident said: “Ours was done on the 24 December then not again until today, & left half of it on the road including broken glass.”
Several residents have recycling piled on streets after delay in collections
Another resident shared: “People are getting frustrated Bristol Waste Company. There have been significant problems since the route changes. Very little notice and very few channels of communication about this announcement.
“We are likely to have boxes left on the street for an extra week. These may be kicked over. Will extra street cleansing be put on to address the issues? If boxes left on the street become contaminated, will the crews still take the boxes or will they be left?
“Appreciate increased volumes but Christmas happens every year, as does a bit of frost, ice and snow in winter.
“Why has the service had so many problems since the collection route changes? Weren’t these supposed to improve the service?”
According to a report shared by Bristol City Council, Bristol Waste’s services were re-routed in October 2023 as a “recovery plan” that would reduce the need for inflationary increases.
The report however stated that the initial re-routing did not prove effective and lead to problems like missed collections and a large number of dropped roads, especially in the north of the city.
After three phases of re-routing, the report also laid out plans for Bristol Waste to further improve their services by increasing processing capacity at their main depot on Albert Road, generating more capacity with improvements at the Avonmouth depot and improving missed collection re-routing.
While this report was shared in September 2024, the website currently lists over 50 streets in the city that have missed recycling collection in recent weeks.
Explaining delays and changes, Bristol Waste said: “This time of year, we see huge increases in recycling. Our crews are dealing with as much as 40% more than normal, much of it cardboard and glass from Christmas and New Year.
“Catching up after the bank holidays, poor weather conditions, the capacity limitations of our trucks and challenges with the increased volume at our processing facility, have meant that we have seen service disruption in some areas of the city.
“We have deployed extra resources to help us overcome these issues. We have added extra trucks temporarily collecting mixed recycling, which is then separated out at our depot. We have also redirected resources from our commercial service, our garden waste collections and paid-for bulky waste until the end of January.
“We are working extremely hard to solve these issues and are hoping to be back on schedule as soon as possible.”
Residents whose standard recycling days are Monday, Wednesday, Tuesday and Thursday, and are still awaiting collection have been asked to leave their bins and containers out so the catch-up crews can pick them up through the week or even the weekend.
All photos: Karen Johnson
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