A LEADING councillor and council boss have apologised over missed bin collections in Bristol during the summer heatwaves.
At the end of June the temperature in the city hit a record high of 37 degrees, leaving binmen struggling to complete rounds and catch up with a backlog. Staff reportedly went off sick with heat exhaustion, and a prolonged shortage of drivers added to pressures. As the extreme heat combined with the World Cup, the amount of recycling collected was 50 per cent higher than average, and residents complained their bins were overflowing.
Bristol Waste and Bristol City Council are now preparing to deal with future high temperatures differently, the environment policy committee heard on July 30.
Green Councillor Abi Finch, chair of the committee, said: “Apologies to anyone who has experienced any disruption to their waste and recycling collection over the recent few weeks. It’s largely because of the number of extreme heat events that we’ve had in the city. But also there have been other factors that have played in, such as driver shortages.
“Bristol Waste and Bristol City Council have learned really valuable lessons from the experience. It’s not related to issues we had in previous years about waste. This really is a one-off incident because of adapting to the extreme heat. Looking ahead, Bristol Waste is recruiting more drivers and is also looking at the way the service is managed in red weather events.”
There is a national shortage of drivers, partly as wages for similar jobs are rising. This summer has also seen unprecedentedly high temperatures, affecting all sorts of public services, and the Met Office has warned that temperatures will continue to climb in future years.
But the disruption was criticised by opposition councillors, who said some residents didn’t have food waste collected for three weeks. They called on Bristol Waste to carry out more preparation for extreme heat and manage staffing levels better.
Conservative Cllr Mark Weston said: “To suddenly find yourself so short of drivers, unless they all simultaneously quit, or they were all simultaneously fired, means then we have a problem of HR planning. We shouldn’t be in that predicament. In Southmead, Henbury and Brenty, it took a month to recover. It’s quicker at Christmas. Our bins were rancid and literally crawling — mine nearly waved to me. It was a fiasco. I commend the staff who ploughed on regardless for sterling work. But actually overall, ‘must do better’ would be the grade I would give.”
Recent figures show that Bristol Waste had been performing well before the start of the hot summer, after recovering from previous disruption when routes were changed across the city. Even last Christmas, there were relatively few missed collections.
But this summer, the heat and World Cup led to a huge increase in the amount of rubbish people were recycling, adding to pressures on the service. Last year, Bristol Waste collected an average of 400 tonnes of recycling a week. This June, binmen collected 500 tonnes in the first week, 580 tonnes in the second week, and then 600 tonnes in the third week.
One option is getting crews to mix all recycling together, which speeds up collections, and then separate materials again back at a depot. Or crews could be sent to specifically pick up cardboard, which now forms the bulk of what binmen pick up due to the rise of online shopping. And a new fleet of bin lorries being bought by Bristol Waste should create extra capacity too.
Green Cllr James Crawford said: “I never would have considered that climate change would have disrupted waste collection. But it’s such a key service to the city and getting planning in for these emergency situations is just going to become more and more vital over the future. All credit to the waste crews, it’s a very challenging situation.”
After the meeting, a Bristol Waste spokesperson thanked residents for their patience and said the company was preparing with the council for future red weather warnings. During the extreme heat, they focused on urgent collections like food waste and clinical waste.
The spokesperson said: “We appreciate everyone’s patience and support as we adapted services to keep our colleagues safe in response to the red weather warning (danger to life) caused by extreme heat in June and the high temperatures throughout this summer. Our absolute priority is the safety of our teams.”
Bristol Waste is hiring new lorry drivers. Class 2 licence holders can earn £37,000 a year, with no experience of waste and recycling collections needed.
By Alex Seabrook, Local Democracy Reporter