It has been six months since the strike by bin drivers employed by Birmingham City Council began. This industrial dispute is about grades, pay rates and equal pay liability, and we do not know how the dispute will be resolved, or when.
An effect is that the Waste Department has had to halt collection of recycling and garden waste from 1 million people in 2025. Only mixed refuse is being collected from households. People have either to drive recycling themselves to a Council site, or throw everything into the general waste/rubbish bin. The Council’s recycling rate, which was already low, has at least halved, with 80-90% of what is collected going into the incinerator at Tyseley. One tonne of rubbish burned becomes 1 tonne of carbon dioxide emitted. We know that the sky is already full up, hence our city should be moving onto a separated system as required by the 2021 Environment Act. Dependency, on incineration cannot be the future, since the Tyseley plant was built in 1996 with a 35-year design life. Birmingham Friends of the Earth for years campaigned for separate food waste collection, as every authority is obliged to introduce, because it leaves the other items clean, dry and able to be used. The food waste containers and cardboard bins already bought by the Waste Department are in store and will be used when there are enough drivers working, the Council says.
We know that many people are responding positively by “getting sorted”; that is composting food and garden waste, taking plastic bags to supermarkets, re-usable items to charity shops, folding and storing cardboard and paper, giving recycling to relatives who live in neighbouring districts. These are all helpful approaches, since if waste is sorted, then it doesn’t have to be wasted. Thank you to all those doing their best to respect the environment.
