LOCAL ISSUES - Talking Rubbish

Pamela Egan loves rubbish. She had already amassed four dustbins before the recent delivery of her wheeled bin. And she welcomed its arrival with open arms. "Unlike some," she says, "I'm not in the least squeamish about 'wheelie bins'."

Mrs Egan, of North Lane, York, was even moved to pen an elegant exposition extolling her family's enthusiasm for waste. "We love rubbish," she wrote. "We save rubbish, we sell rubbish, we take rubbish to the tip and fetch someone else's rubbish back home with us.

"We even buy more rubbish at car boot sales, jumble sales and auto jumbles.

"We are the only people I know who have four mix'n'match dustbins, all with odd lids, one sports a splendid brass knob.

"Bird tables, nest boxes, window boxes and flower tubs are all made from 'useful wood' that started out life as hi-fi speakers or wardrobes. Old water cisterns and a Victorian toilet spill over with a veritable mass of plants and bulbs.

"Our hub cap collection, found on grass verges, is phenomenal. They sit around looking as if they might be useful and who knows, come the revolution, when 'Frisbees' will be called upon to throw at the marauding hordes?"

If only there were more Mrs Egans about, ready to adopt an imaginative approach to rubbish, we would be able to reduce our shockingly wasteful ways. On average, each York household produces about one tonne of waste per year. This adds up to about 54,000 tonnes annually.

In the past, our waste was carted off to the landfill site in black bin bags. Then someone invented the wheelie bin. This took the world of rubbish by storm. Bigger, more hygenic and easier for refuse collectors to handle, wheelie bins were soon appearing in backyards and gardens up and down the land.

In York, about 35,000 households used wheeled bins until recently. A further 20,000 homes in outer York have been supplied with them in March and April. Where they have been introduced, the council is reporting a satisfaction rating from users of well over 90 per cent.

But not everybody is happy. Residents in several areas, including South Bank and The Groves, are most unhappy at plans to consign their black bags to the dustbin of history.

Householders in Diamond Street and Emerald Street in The Groves are still waiting to hear the council's reaction to their concerns. John Cossham, of Emerald Street, explained that these centred on access problems to the narrow, terraced streets.

"The council thinks it's a good idea for residents to put the bins out in the back lanes in a certain area ready for collection. This will block the back lanes which are used by two or three residents as a thoroughfare to put their cars in the backyard garages.

"It's already quite difficult to get past the bags of rubbish, but with 30 or 50 bins it's going to be impossible."

Elsewhere, people have complained that elderly and disabled residents would struggle to push the wheelie bins to and from a central collection point. And worries have also been expressed about the security implications of leaving a bin bearing your house number in the street: isn't it simply telling burglars that your house is empty?

Coun Martin Brumby is the council's leading wheelie bin cheerleader. The chairman of the environmental services committee says it's not about cost reduction - converting to wheelie bins is an expensive business. Instead it is to do with the health benefits to both council workers and householders. Wheelie bins protect refuse collectors from the hazards of broken glass, china and discarded syringes. They also contain rotting rubbish smells and stop the mess caused by cats ripping open bin liners.

He is angry at the suggestion that the frail or disabled will suffer from the introduction of the new bins. "If people can't be bothered to read the leaflets, that's regrettable," he said.

"For people who are disabled with no able-bodied person in the house, some 90-year-old granny with a wooden leg and the rest of it, we will help them and make sure the bin gets wheeled back for them."

In response to public opinion, the council is to ballot streets where householders have complained about the introduction of wheelie bins. Where there is a majority against them, they will be left in peace with their bin bags. Does Coun Brumby have a wheelie bin? "I wish I had. It doesn't look as though I am going to get one." Ironically, he lives in a street that seems set against the idea.

For Groves resident John Cossham the issue goes wider than which bin is best, however. He is a member of the Green Party - wife Gillian is the party's candidate in the forthcoming Monk Ward by-election - and he wants environmental action on waste.

"I wish the council were putting more energy and more money into recycling our rubbish rather than making it easier for us to throw everything away."

He would like to see the kerbside collections of recyclable waste to be extended across York, and policies to encourage everyone to reduce waste.

"We both feel that waste is a huge problem and it's making problems for future generations which we need to be addressing." The man charged with doing just that is Jonathan Eyre. The council's waste strategy development officer says that about half of what we throw away could be recycled. And with the landfill tax going up every year, there is a financial imperative to divert rubbish away from the hole in the ground at Harewood Whin, Rufforth.

Mr Eyre oversees the council's 50 recycling sites, at supermarkets, tips and elsewhere. New locations are always being sought: the B&Q store on Hull Road is the latest to open.

He also wants to extend the kerbside recycling projects which have been popular in the trial areas of Huntington and Acomb. The next step is to develop a local materials recycling facility.

This would allow the newspapers and glass collected from the kerbside to be sorted and packaged into a form the waste industry can easily handle.

Mr Eyre's immediate target is to double the number of households covered by the kerbside recycling scheme by the end of summer and raise the number to 6,500 by March next year.

Kitchen and garden waste can be composted. To encourage residents to do just that, reduced cost compost bins were delivered to 5,500 homes. This idea is being further developed through York Neighbourhood Forums.

Meanwhile all the green garden waste collected in special skips at the Foss Islands and Towthorpe tips is being turned into compost.

Starting at Easter and running for eight weeks, residents can collect free bags of the resulting compost from the Foss Islands depot. Hopefully, this will divert 4,500 tonnes of waste away from landfill and into people's gardens.

No doubt these measures will appeal to recycling fan Pamela Egan. With the arrival of her new wheelie bin, she is already planning to turn her four redundant dustbins into water butts, flower containers and other garden features. "One thing's for sure," she says, "they won't find their way to the local tip."