'We do not want to campaign to get our bins emptied'

Residents living in an area beset by litter and fly tipping have said they do not want to have to spend their lives "campaigning to get a bin emptied".

Dozens of people from St Pauls, Bristol, attended a meeting held by Bristol Waste on Tuesday to discuss waste collection. Communal bins have been used in the area for more than a decade but campaigners say that with a growing population the system has broken down.

Resident and co-leader of the Better Streets campaign, Tara Miran, said the issues had reached "an unacceptable stage", adding "we just can't carry on like this".

Bristol Waste described the situation as "complicated" but has announced new measures will come into force from Monday.

Emma Reynolds, who co-leads the Better Streets St Pauls campaign, said: "We don't want to have to spend our lives campaigning to get a bin emptied.

"What we want to do is get on with our lives, maybe plant some flowers, maybe do something nice."

Hannah Deas from Bristol Waste - the Bristol City Council-owned company in charge of waste collection across the city - said there was "no one solution" that would suit every resident.

"What works at one end of the street won't necessarily work for the other end," she added.

Miran, who said she was woken at dawn every day by seagulls targeting open bins, added: "It's a public health crisis, it's an environmental crisis."

In a bid to tackle the issues facing residents, Bristol Waste has agreed for some changes to start next week.

These include a truck to sweep the area for fly tipped items every morning, and street cleaning teams arriving after the bins have been collected to stop waste littering the street.

But some residents have voiced concerns that daily visits from cleaning teams may encourage more dumping.

Resident Pavlos Kyriacou said it was "ludicrous" that he could be charged £25 to arrange for an old mattress to be disposed of properly, while a fly tipped mattress could be simply dumped and then collected for free.

"The incentive to get rid of that mattress in a sensible way is not there - so after a while people think, 'if I leave it there someone in a couple of days will come and take it away for me'."

Longer-term, Bristol Waste said it would look at reducing the number of communal bins and creating spaces for bins on City Road.

Deas described the opinions shared in the meeting as "so valuable".

"People who wake up in St Pauls, people who work in St Pauls, people who spend their days here, have got this amazing knowledge of the community," she added.

"Our teams, the Bristol Waste teams who are working here day in, day out, also have a really good knowledge - we have to make sure all of this knowledge is working towards the same thing."

Deas also acknowledged that the city had "changed hugely" since the communal bin plans were introduced, and so the council would go "back to the drawing board" to find the best solution.

Residents have been invited to a second meeting with Bristol Waste on Saturday.

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