Roads littered with bursting bin bags. The unmistakable smell of rot in the air. A city all but abandoned, overrun with foxes, rats and gulls.
It might sound like a scene from a Hollywood disaster flick but this could soon be the reality for thousands of furious Bristolians after the city’s Green-led council announced a farcical plan to reduce the frequency of black bin collections from biweekly to just once a month.
The Green Party – which holds 34 of 70 seats on Bristol City Council – claims the move will encourage the city’s near half-million residents to recycle more while also reducing carbon emissions and saving £2.3million.
On the streets of Bristol, however, the proposal has been met with rage. ‘Where on earth am I supposed to store four-week’s worth of used nappies?’ fumed Debbie, a young single mother to two toddlers.
When the Mail visited earlier last week, concerned locals – from both sides of the political divide – warned of a likely surge in fly-tipping and expressed fears that a sanitation crisis could render their streets almost uninhabitable and slash the value of their homes.
The Greens now face accusations of everything from ‘virtue-signalling’ to ‘lunacy’, with one elderly lady claiming: ‘The Greens lied in their manifesto, they’ve taken the council by stealth and now they’re running the city like a Mafia.’
No wonder then a petition opposing the plan has – at the time of writing – garnered over 8,000 signatures, with hundreds more adding their names each day.
Bristol has long been known for its Left-wing politics and support for environmental issues. Indeed, the Green Party’s co-leader Carla Denyer is the MP for Bristol Central. And yet, the fracas over bin collections now threatens to undermine the liberal consensus that has long held this West Country stronghold together.
So just why did Bristol City Council go to war with its own residents, and is there any hope at all that ordinary Bristolians can still triumph against an overweening city council hell-bent on its own puritanical agenda?
The absurd story begins in November last year when a leaked city council document revealed plans to overhaul refuse collection in order to combat the rising cost of waste disposal.
However, the discovery was overshadowed by the announcement a week earlier that the council was seeking an unprecedented 15 per cent rise in council tax to plug a £50million ‘black hole’ in its finances.
It wasn’t until last Monday – two months after the leak – that the council officially opened a public consultation on its refuse plans and residents woke up to the reality of this extraordinary scheme.
The survey, available online, asks Bristolians to choose between three different options: to keep black bin collections at their current fortnightly frequency, or to reduce them to once every three weeks or once every four weeks.
While the consultation will remain open until March and no final decision taken until the spring, it’s fair to say the very suggestion of cutting back on collections has been met with incredulity.
‘I’m not worried, I’m furious,’ revealed a trembling Cheska King, who is in her 60s and lives in an imposing terraced house in the affluent Clifton neighbourhood.
‘I voted Green in the local elections because I wanted a city that was clean. But this plan will achieve the exact opposite. We’ll have rubbish flying down the street.’
Mrs King showed me into her living room and opened a drawer full of Green Party leaflets before shutting it again with an almighty huff.
‘Everyone I’ve spoken to is up in arms,’ she continued. ‘Mark my words – if the Greens had warned us about this policy, they would never have been voted in. And if they go ahead, it won’t be long before they’re voted straight back out again,’ she said.
‘There’s a consensus across Bristol that we want to recycle and we want to be green, but this has been a catastrophe.’
A few streets away in Clifton village, charming young florist Camila Kessler, who owns Forest And The Flowers, is still disgusted after the council took away the industrial black bins she and fellow business owners once relied on.
‘They removed them on aesthetic grounds, but now black bin bags are piling up on the kerb and it’s even worse. It’s like a dictatorship in Bristol. I know there’s a consultation going on but no one really thinks the council will listen to us.
‘It’s just like the pedestrianisation of Princess Victoria Street,’ the incensed Camila continued, referencing a controversial scheme in a fenced-off area currently swarming with diggers.
‘We all wrote to the council opposing the plan but they ignored us and now we don’t get nearly as much business and shops are closing down. The butcher’s down the road says the pedestrianisation has lost them more business than the pandemic.
‘Our city is already messy,’ Camila conceded, visibly upset. ‘But with this bizarre new plan, it’s now going to be messy and stinky. I’ve already started to look at moving away.’
A brisk walk north of the city centre, in the trendy student hotspot of Bishopston, economics student Rebecca has equally serious concerns: ‘I live with three other girls and we easily fill up our black bins every fortnight. This is a small student flat, so we don’t have anywhere to store extra rubbish – it’s going to have to go outside. But I can already see the foxes and rats getting at it.’
Rebecca paused before adding: ‘I’m sorry to be crude, but it’s mortifying to think that as young women we could have sanitary products strewn across the pavement. Luckily, I’ll be leaving Bristol after I graduate but I feel sorry for anyone who lives here. The city will look like a slum if rubbish isn’t collected.’
There’s no doubt that the vermin issue is at the forefront of many Bristolians’ minds. The city is thought to have the third most urban foxes in Britain, behind Bournemouth and London, with up to 20 inhabiting each square kilometre.
Aside from the blood-curdling screams they make in the dead of night, foxes can also carry infections and represent a physical threat to domestic pets and – on rare but tragic occasions – to young children, too.
One man who knows more about the pest problem in Bristol than anyone else is extermination expert Tom Smit, known to locals simply as ‘The Rat Man’.
At over 6ft 3in, Tom is an imposing but charming hometown hero. Not only has he rid numerous homes of rats and other pests, but he’s even started a hugely popular nighttime ‘rat tour’ of Bristol – which, he assures me, is not for the faint-hearted.
And yet, it brings Tom no satisfaction to admit that his extermination service will see an increased demand should bin collections be reduced.
‘More rubbish on the streets will mean more rats. The vast majority of rats live in the sewers, but if there’s a surplus of food on the streets, then you’ll inevitably see an increased presence above ground.
‘But it won’t stop there. Rats are just one part of the urban wildlife ecosystem. What eats rats? Well, foxes do. So more rats means more foxes and so it goes on.’
‘The reality is,’ Tom continued, ‘that the council can barely handle collecting the bins every fortnight. You only have to look at the uncollected rubbish already in the streets to see that.’
Indeed, throughout the city black bin bags are already piled high beside railings or collecting on street corners. At the same time, numerous food caddies lie upturned, their contents spooling on the pavements. It’s difficult not to think that the mooted 50 per cent reduction in household waste collection will come with horrific consequences.
So what is the true likelihood of the Green Party forcing through its wildly unpopular agenda?
‘I suspect the threat of monthly collections is purely being used to soften up the city for collections every three weeks,’ Mark Weston, Conservative leader on the Council, told the Mail.
‘It is a hard, calculated ploy designed to provoke fear. For some reason, the Greens have decided to try and bully the city. They should be ashamed.’
He went on: ‘There are a host of reasons to oppose this change – from health and hygiene concerns to a predictable increase in fly-tipping and the disproportionate impact on households with large families or medical needs.
‘The critical thing here is that when people pay their council tax they expect an absolute minimum of service,’ the councillor concluded.
‘They expect the grass cut, the roads to be maintained and the rubbish to be collected. Right now people are being asked to pay more in tax for less and less.’
Samuel Williams, the former Tory candidate for Bristol Central, is equally despairing: ‘The city will say no, [but] they will do it anyway and then we have to enjoy a month’s worth of dirty nappies overflowing across our streets in the heights of summer.’
One councillor more worried than most is Labour’s Tom Renhard, whose partner is due to give birth in just a few weeks. ‘Any parent will tell you just how quickly newborns’ nappies fill up a black bin,’ he told the Mail wryly.
‘If someone forgets bin day or goes on holiday, they could have rubbish sat outside for two months – in which time the average Bristol household will pay £382 in council tax.’
He added: ‘Flytips are already a huge problem across Bristol. They’re getting larger and attracting more wildlife. While I’m sure that rats, gulls and foxes will be delighted about the prospect of rubbish sitting outside for four weeks, working people are not.’
Despite the criticism, the Greens remain stubbornly resolute.
Martin Fodor, chairman of the council’s Environment and Sustainability committee, has been a leading voice in the effort to reduce collections.
‘Anything that ends up in the black-bin waste is taken away for incineration or sent to land-fill – both of which come with serious environmental and cost issues,’ argues the councillor in a public statement.
‘We firmly believe that by collecting black-bin waste every three or four weeks instead of every two we will increase the amount of waste our city recycles, reduce costs and significantly lower carbon emissions.’
Green Councillor Heather Mack, deputy leader of the council, has since suggested that the new scheme could come with certain caveats. ‘We would also offer larger bins for larger households,’ she said. ‘And an extra collection for people with sanitary products or nappies.’
However, many residents feel her mitigations are nothing more than a cynical attempt to spin what has clearly been a tremendous own goal for the Green Party.
There is no doubt that councils up and down the country have sought to save money in similar ways. Indeed, since 2015 there has been a 20-fold increase in the number of councils collecting certain rubbish once every three weeks. Meanwhile, Fife and Conwy county borough councils in Scotland and Wales have already switched to monthly collections.
However, the latest showdown in Bristol shows that taxpayers will only put up with so much. Whether the swell of dissenting voices is listened to, of course, is another matter.
It may seem trivial to an outsider, but refuse has clearly become a touchpoint for a broader discontent between Bristol City Council and the people who call the city home. And it is no exaggeration to say that the policy is being discussed in every cafe, bar, pub and restaurant in the city.
At least when it comes to gossip, every day is bin day in Bristol.