Sutton's new bin rounds have captured the imagination

8:10am Tuesday 24th April 2012 in News By James Pepper

Reporter James Pepper joins the rounds with Sutton Council Reporter James Pepper joins the rounds with Sutton Council

The public reaction to Sutton Council's new fruit-themed bin collections has been a mixed bag.

While it appears to have caught the attention of the national press, including a rant from Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail last week, the new collections are proving a talking point in pubs and front rooms across the borough.

The controversial new collections, which began last week, are spread between the hours of 6am and 8.30pm, including a new Saturday collection between 7am and 2.45pm.

Areas within the borough have been named after fruit to signify which day their bins will be collected and to help people remember.

Now, rather than just having regular Monday, residents have Blueberry Monday, Lime Tuesday, Strawberry Wednesday, Lemon Thursday, Plum Friday and Peach Saturday.

By using a waste lorry twice a day with different crews on board, instead of using the fleet all at once, the council has reduced the amount of waste vehicles it needs from 30 to 20, saving itself £500,000.

Matt Clubb, head of waste management, admitted the service has had a few teething problems but that was to be expected.

"We've had a few roads which we have missed, but we are operating a mop up round to pick up anything which doesn't get collected," he said.

"The crews are learning new routes which have been thrown up as a result of the changes so they are getting used to it."

James Pepper refuse collector in Sutton
Our man James Pepper out on a refuse route

Mr Clubb reassured residents that apart from later collections during the day and a Saturday morning collection for the peaches, they would not notice the difference.

"During our review, residents made it clear they wanted to keep weekly collections," he explained.

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"By using this continental model, and with it, becoming the first authority in the country to introduce double shifting, we don't think things will be any different for residents."

However, sources in the council's waste and recycling department have said during trials of new routes some collections did not finish until 10.30pm - and predicted the new routes would overrun their 8.30pm cut off.

James Pepper refuse collector in Sutton

Graham Murray, a binman, said of the new collections: "It's taking some getting used to but it's going well so far.

"Some of the men on the afternoon shifts will have to adjust their body clocks because they've been used to getting to work at 5.30am.

"The important thing for us is that we've still got a job – and the residents are happy that they’ve still got a weekly collection."

Comments on the www.suttonguardian.co.uk include Suttonres22 saying: "I think this is brilliant, a bit wacky but certainly memorable and I will certainly remember when my bin will be collected."

Meanwhile one relatively witty resident quipped: "Where I live I am now in an area known as Lime Tuesday and as requested put both my bins out by 6am.

"By 8.30 my green bin still had not been emptied. Well done Sutton Council your new scheme has already gone pear shaped."

Comments(17)

Giles C says...
6:31pm Tue 24 Apr 12

This sesame street fruit based collection service just shows the stupid ends to which lbs will go to pee everyone off. I would like to know how much this hair brained scheme cost? Why are they treating us like 5 year olds?

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theresa7475 says...
7:07pm Tue 24 Apr 12

A typical way to waste some money. Why not invest in retraining as the bin man fail to collect my bins time and time again. I am lucky if the recycling gets collected once a month. You never get an explanation as to why the didn't bother.

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dmw-10 says...
10:18pm Tue 24 Apr 12

Giles C wrote:
This sesame street fruit based collection service just shows the stupid ends to which lbs will go to pee everyone off. I would like to know how much this hair brained scheme cost? Why are they treating us like 5 year olds?
My thoughts exactly.

The link between fruits and bin collections is totally beyond me. Why not colour code it? Why have colours and fruits? We certainly are being treated like children.

And for the record, LBS didn't collect our rubbish on time and our collection day hasn't changed.

What a waste of money!

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imalaydee says...
1:20am Wed 25 Apr 12

I thought it was a joke when the leaflet first came through the door! the day is exactly the same as before, the "bin out" time is exactly the same as before, the only difference is before the bin would be emptied by 1pm and now is seems to be around 7pm, so all they had to do was put a notice in the paper that the bins might be picked up a bit later so not to worry.

And what is your Reporter doing in those pics! I have never seen a binman that happy..ever.

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LiberalsOut says...
7:26am Wed 25 Apr 12

Is anyone suprised by this scheme - you should be used to hairbrained ideas from this lot as they have been having them for 20 years at vast expense to the Tax Payer

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Binsanity says...
8:42am Wed 25 Apr 12

Every Driver/Loader is doing their utmost to make a difficult situation work. Waking sleeping children, being unable to access areas and causing traffic jams is not our idea of fun but we will give it our best shot. We are just glad to have that non fruit themed day off (name escapes me but it's between Saturday and Monday). Please, no more fruit related jokes we've heard them all, save them for the fruit salads in office. On a more serious note, the public can help us by parking straight, tight to kerbs and not leaving wheels on full lock. Happy bins.

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BobSt58 says...
9:38am Wed 25 Apr 12

I don't normally side wit the council, but I hav to agree with binsanity - if you read any of the articles over the last few months the binmen clearly didnt want this, its not them that should be getting the grief its whoever thought up this scheme, which doesnt work, my bin wasnt collected on the day it was meant to be, recycling not done for 3 weeks, why didnt they find something that worked instead of this? And the fruit thing is another waste of money. How long will it have to be like this before they see sense and change it back?
p.s. that reporter clearly is not "out on a round" - there's not a house in sight! Or another binman.

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Mr Flange of Wallington says...
4:49pm Wed 25 Apr 12

First, there was the LBS branded blue bin for glass fiasco, then the scandle of the garden waste bag charge, and now the fruit loops.

When will this loony liberal council learn to SAVE money, and not fritter it away on hairbrained nonsense?

AND when will the electorate get round to getting off their backsides and doing something about it?

May 2014 is our next chance. Lets hope people remember all the RUBBISH related issues then.

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theresa7475 says...
6:10pm Wed 25 Apr 12

So if your day has remained the same, so no confusion there, then who's fault is it if the bin men dont bother to take your rubbish away? When you ring to log a complaint, all you get is "We'll pass the message on" And as for bin men commenting on how we park, heaven for bid they could move the cart over abit to enable cars to still get past!

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Sutton53 says...
6:30pm Wed 25 Apr 12

They didn't change our collection day for general waste or recycling, but the recycling date was moved to the following week. Hence we had three weeks of recycling squashed into our green bins. They collected our recycling at 7.15pm.

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dmw-10 says...
8:21pm Wed 25 Apr 12

To make a point here, I don't actually put any blame on the bin men, more on those who sit in the office assisting these ideas. I actually have a very good team of bin men collecting our rubbish and whilst I agree that the refuse trucks can be a nuisance to road users (yes, I'm one of them) I'm sure you would be more annoyed if your bins didn't get collected for two weeks! I don't envy the job they do, nor the fact they are out in all weathers, but these people DO work, and hard at that!

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Binsanity says...
8:44pm Wed 25 Apr 12

Thanks dmw-10 people like you make our job worthwhile.

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JuleseyWulsey says...
1:36pm Fri 27 Apr 12

Bin collections can be noisy, but what do you expect???? I'd rather this than not have a service. I have a great bin collection service and the binmen work hard as mentioned before and often in horrendous weather. They are essential to society and our well being . Would you moan about keeping your children awake if they ended up with sickness through filthy streets . And thank goodness they all still have jobs. They are one of the top in the hierarchy of our society in my eyes. Perhaps the money wasted on marketing, printing these fruity labels you could give the bin men a payrise. No wonder people are moaning about bins not being collected when time is wasted sticking labels onto thousands of bins - they don't have time to do their job! From a very satisfied customer.

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Slim Mal says...
2:05pm Fri 27 Apr 12

The fruity connection a bit whacky but come on first week a day late, second week all correct even recyclables. Well done LB.Sutton weekly collections maintained & £500,000 saving

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Binsanity says...
7:37pm Fri 27 Apr 12

What a very, very, clever smokescreen this fruit adaptation has been. It's got everybody focused on an irrelevant issue. The bigger issues that many people have raised are being overshadowed and quite possibly overlooked.

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Wait right there says...
12:44am Sun 29 Apr 12

Money saved.
Front line workers jobs saved.
Weekly collections saved.
Raising awareness by getting it talked about even in the national press that's money saved too.

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Lt. Gonzo says...
4:46pm Tue 1 May 12

Our brown bin has now been overdue for collection for four days, following last weeks' failure to collect recycling. Waste Services are not answering phones, I am waiting for a return call from the Head of Waste Management, although I will not hold my breath. I can only hope this is not a reprisal of the botched planning a few years ago that led to fortnightly collections being aborted at an early juncture. During that change the fee for fortnightly rounds was significantly less than for weekly collections, so the burden on taxpayers was apparently reduced. However, the council was forced by voters to revert to a weekly collection, went back, cap in hand, to the sub-contractor who quoted a price 170% more than the old system cost. Just in case they thought we had all forgot about that.

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