RESIDENTS in South Birmingham will soon be getting wheelie bins as the big city roll-out of the scheme reaches its conclusion.
This final phase will begin on Monday (September 28) and people in Longbridge, Northfield, Rednal and Frankley can expect to get their bins from October 22 onwards.
Birmingham City Council will deliver two bins – both will be grey, with the household waste one, which is 180 litres, having a grey lid and the larger recycling one, which is 240litres, having a blue lid.
That will provide almost double the recycling capacity, which is currently 110litres in total – 55litres in each the paper and card box and the one for bottles, glass and cans.
All recycling will go into the same wheelie bin, with a pod incorporated for paper and card.
A total of 170,000 new bins for 85,000 households will be delivered in this stage of the scheme, which excludes flats and apartments.
Following analysis of the whole city and the roads within it, residents will have received a red or green card which, like a traffic light system, lets them know if they are eligible or not.
A total of 1,300 people have questioned being given a green card and 500 of those decisions have been changed.
Whilst some bins will simply be left outside homes and then put back after collection, in other areas there will be designated collection points where residents will be asked to put their containers in a specific place.
The first collection of wheelie bins in South Birmingham starts on November 16 and, as the deadline has passed for people to contest whether their red or green card decision is correct, they will have to wait until after the collections have started to appeal.
Residents wanting assistance will be able to get in touch with the council’s contact centre.
Coun Lisa Trickett, who is responsible for sustainability, said: “We are asking people to be patient – no scheme on this scale will be perfect from the start and we accept there will be teething problems that need sorting out and we will be doing that.
“We want people to know that we are listening and we will be doing all we can to help them.”
And she added, the scheme had already had a positive impact.
Statistics show that in some parts of the city, since the wheelie bins scheme was introduced, recycling rates have increased to 30 per cent with one area going up as much as 44.
The council’s aim is for Birmingham to be a zero waste city within five years where all of the waste is either reduced, reused or recycled.
Coun Trickett said: “As well as being good for the environment and reducing our carbon footprint, it also saves us and makes us money.
“When waste goes to landfill we are charged a landfill tax on the amount we send there – the less we send, the lesss we pay.
“And we can sell recycled materials to generate funds as well, which makes us money.
“It has also improved public health – the streets are a lot cleaner and there are no black bags for foxes and rats to rip open.”
One thing Coun Trickett she did suggest though is that residents make sure their bins, when they get them, are clearly marked with their house number.
“Bins can go walkabouts because they are not necessarily put back exactly in the place where they are collected from or, because they look the same, there can be confusion over whose bin is whose.”
She said a lot of residents had decorated theirs to personalise them and to make them easier to distinguish from other people’s.
There are stickers available so people can have flowers or other pictures on their bins.
Visit http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/wheeliebins for more on the wheelie bins scheme.
