Defra-backed charity slams collection guidance

Government guidance supporting weekly refuse collections and underlining the importance of council tax services is headline-making propaganda, according to a charity part-funded by Defra.

Keep Britain Tidy today (January 9) denounced the Guidance on weekly rubbish collections report dubbed the bin bible by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) as a list of weak evidence based on examples cherry-picked from across 84 local authorities.

And, the charity added that it believed fortnightly collections are the way to increase recycling.

Responding to each of the 10 myths published in the guidance, the charity argued the chance of England meeting the 50% statutory recycling target had become increasingly unlikely since the coalition government took power.

The charity went on to tell letsrecycle.com it would support the Labour Partys pledge not to interfere in local authority collections if re-elected (see letsrecycle.com story).

The criticism follows a planned cut to the amount of funding Keep Britain Tidy will receive from the government between now and 2015.

Budget

In the last financial year, the charity received 3.5 million of its total 7.8 million budget from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), with a scheme-related contribution by DCLG. However, in 2013/14 the amount received by Defra has decreased to 2 million, with just 500,000 of funding planned for 2014/15.

Tim Burns, evidence and policy manager at Keep Britain Tidy, said: In the guidance, DCLG sets out to bust a number of myths it claims have been employed by bin bureaucrats regarding weekly waste collections. Whilst Keep Britain Tidy does not disagree with all of the myths busted by DCLG in the document, we do not believe they represent a true and evidence-based picture as to the current challenges of the waste sector to recycle more.

He added: We should be proud of our record on recycling. Over the past 20 years we have seen household and commercial recycling vastly improve. Worryingly, however, since 2010 when the present coalition government took power, household recycling rate increases have slowed to almost a complete standstill.

The charity was also sceptical of DCLGs reliance on incentive-based recycling and its own Weekly Collection Support Scheme, a 250 million venture to encourage councils employing a fortnightly service to reinstate weekly collections.

Food collection

The charity claims that almost all local authorities selected for the programme had used the funding to improve recycling and separate food collection schemes, with only one opting to reinstate a weekly refuse collection service.

Commenting on whether the charity could justify criticising the government, a Keep Britain Tidy spokeswoman told letsrecycle.com: Just because we get some funding from government sources it does not mean we cant voice our opinion when we believe they are wrong. As a charity, we think that fortnightly collections are the right way to increase recycling.

A spokeswoman for Defra said: Keep Britain Tidy is an independent group, so it is not up to the government to comment on whatever their position might be.

• NOTE: Clarifying its stance on January 10, Keep Britain Tidy said: “Keep Britain Tidy believes that there is clear evidence that fortnightly waste collections (alongside comprehensive recycling and food collections) are one way to increase recycling. We understand that fortnightly collections may not always be the best approach for every council, but if we wish to meet our recycling targets in England for 2020 we should be encouraging rather than hindering their use.”