While many councils are looking at switching from fortnightly to weekly bin collections – helped with a new £250 million fund from the DCLG – Labour-run Sheffield are moving in the opposite direction. The Daily Mail reports that they are hoping to save £1.6 million a year by switching from weekly to fortnightly bin collections. But this figure seems to ignore any share o the £250 million they might have received for maintaining a weekly service.
Furthermore there will be £1 million spent of "changeover costs" (I think mostly redundancy payments or dustmen) plus another £400,000 or "appropriate communication" with residents – presumably propaganda on how better off they will be having their stinking rubbish left to pile up for two weeks.
So the financial case for Sheffield cutting this service looks shaky. So does the environmental one. There are ways of achieving ecological advances in waste disposal through technological advance. There are also ways to increase recycling through incentives. But some Green ideologues just feel that it doesn't count unless human beings are being made to suffer through authoritarian environmentalism of the kind favoured by Sheffield City Council.