Rolling out kerbside glass collections in Bedford "incredibly risky thanks to Government backtracking" says council's environment boss

Government “backtracking” has made rolling out kerbside glass collections in Bedford “incredibly risky”, a meeting heard.

And the Environment and Sustainable Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee was told on Thursday (July 20) that noise issues have to be considered along with adding new collection vehicles and containers.

Paul Pace, the council’s chief officer of environment, told the committee: “The government, or Defra (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs) I should say, has basically parked a number of the key parts of legislation that we’ve been waiting for as council for about three years.

“The first point is that glass was excluded from the deposit return scheme, at one point Defra was looking to bring in a scheme where the recycled glass would generate an income back to local authorities to allow us to collect that from the curbside at no extra cost.

“Defra then decided to backtrack on that and decided to put that under the extended producer responsibility.

“Just this month Defra has come out and said basically the extended producer responsibility is very likely to be delayed. [This] may be for a very long time.”

Mr Pace pointed out that other councils have started kerbside collections of glass, but with the government’s “quick u-turns” the borough council sees this is seen as “incredibly risky”.

He added that the council would be “foolhardy” to roll out a borough-wide scheme without government guidance and funding plans in place.

“That’s why we’re looking to do a trial in a number of different areas of the borough,” he said.

“With different containers and different [collection] frequencies to make sure that we are then in a place where we can successfully roll out a scheme right across the borough – once the direction comes from Defra.

Councillor Charles Royden (LibDem, Brickhill) asked when the glass collection trial would begin.

Mr Pace replied: “We’re actually working on that at this moment in time in relation to collecting the costs together. We’re also looking at the rounds and the types of vehicles that we will need and also the containers. So I can’t give you a precise date, but it is very much something that we’re working on and would like to get started this year.

“What may work really well in one borough or one council area [might not] work in another borough area.

“We are very mindful that rolling out plastic boxes enabling people to put glass in plastic boxes is a massive health and safety manual handling issue to the crews. We certainly don’t want to be doing glass collections at six o’clock in the morning, otherwise we’re going to be getting noise complaints left right and centre.

“Obviously our own trial will give us probably different results than what we’re getting from other councils. [But] we’ll be in a position then to come straight out the block.”