Bohemia Village Voice

The ugly truth of communal bins

Below is an abridged copy of the letter, entitled “Communal Bins – the ugly truth” delivered on Nov 28th 2008 by Bill Third and John Humphries to Bohemia residents affected by the Council’s proposed communal bins scheme. A total of 600 copies were hand delivered to the following roads: St Peter’s Road, London Road, Tower Road, Tower Road West, Lower South Road, North Road, Bohemia Road, Clarence Road, Aldborough Road, Newgate Road, Salisbury Road, Cranbrook Road and St Paul’s Road.
When all the results are in, they will be collated and forwarded to Jane Butters (Borough Solicitor), Cllr Roy Tucker (Lead council member for environment & recycling), Peter Holland (chair of the Bohemia Area Association), Richard Homewood (HBC’s Corporate Director of Environmental Services) and to our local Councillors Andrew Cartwright and Kim Forward.

BILL THIRD 28 ST PETER’S ROAD         
JOHN HUMPHRIES 33 ST PETER’S ROAD
Dear Resident,
Communal bins: the ugly truth
The Council’s latest proposal for dealing with the problem of waste and recycling is to install communal bins throughout Bohemia. Experience shows with similar bins that their presence leads to a build-up of fly-tipping of all kinds of unwanted material such as old TV sets, broken beds and even mattresses. This makes the remedy worse than the original problem. Despite what the Council says about the frequency of cleaning of these bins, as the photograph shows, the reality is quite different.
As well as attracting mess, the bins will take up valuable parking space in the already overcrowded streets of Bohemia. We appreciate the need to improve recycling, and to keep the streets clean, but this remedy will cause more problems than it solves. The current black-bag system works well in most roads. One lorry and a team of operators can clear a street like St Peter’s Road in under 15 minutes. The emptying of communal bins requires special vehicles, the cost of which, whatever Veolia says to the contrary, will be borne by you, as a Council taxpayer. We don’t want communal bins! What you can do …  if you don’t want communal bins:
1. Make sure you let the Council know your feelings by completing and returning their questionnaire.
2 If you haven’t yet signed the petition, please do so now and return it as soon as possible to us.
The Council’s consultation closing date is 12th Jan!
Thank you, Bill Third & John Humphries.   (28 Nov 08)