A public bin pilot programme designed to improve recycling on Belfast streets has created division at City Hall, over the issue of where to place the new bins.
At this week’s full meeting of Belfast City Council, Sinn Féin and the Green Party were at loggerheads over where to place around 25 bins as part of a £22,000 project attempting to change attitudes to outdoor citizen recycling.
Environmental charity Hubbub recently approached Belfast City Council after securing funding from the Coca-Cola Foundation to run a three month trial in Northern Ireland, as part of its #InTheLoop campaign.
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The pilot involves the placing of new dual bins, one recycling and one normal street litter bin, with a high visibility yellow background, designed to accentuate the type of waste designated to each bin.
The purpose is to reduce ‘contamination,’ that is recycling waste being mixed with non-recycling, one of the greatest threats waste managers face in reaching recycling targets and reducing landfill costs.
The pilot will begin in April or May and will be promoted and monitored for three months. Councillors were asked to maximise the potential of the project by ensuring that they were positioned where high levels of recyclable material was generated.
However, this is where the political parties ran into disagreements at the first debate on the pilot, at the council’s People and Communities Committee last month, when a Green proposal ran into opposition.
Green Councillor Anthony Flynn proposed placing one trial dual recycling bin in one park in North, South and West Belfast, with the rest in the city centre.
This was amended by Sinn Féin Councillor JJ Magee, who proposed placing recycling bins more evenly across the four quarters of the city and also in the city centre, “to ensure an even spread throughout all areas and not just the city centre.” This amended proposal was carried with eight voters in support and five against.
However, at the full council this week, the Greens again proposed their version of the trial - one set of bins for a park in each quarter, and the rest in the city centre.
Councillor Flynn told the chamber the pilot should focus on “areas of greatest footfall.” He said: “I receive regular complaints from residents who use our parks and local spaces about the lack of recycling provision in those key areas. This is about ensuring our parks are kept clean.
“In a place like Botanic Gardens for example, when the weather is good we have hundreds of people using those facilities - this scheme is intended to be rolled out in the next few months, the prime time for this type of scheme.
“It will be much easier to roll out within council facilities, simply because of land-use and permissions.”
Sinn Féin Councillor Matt Garrett said: “The resources available will amount to about 25 bins. Our proposal is that they are split across the city, that five will go to each quarter of the city, and the remaining five go into the city core.
“It means there would be a fair spread, it means it would be (addressing) attitudes to recycling right across the city, and not just in the city core, notwithstanding that it is an important area.”
He added: “Some of these could potentially go into parks across the city, you could have one in a park and the rest in areas of high footfall, beside food outlets and supermarkets. Places where you could look at information, and try to change attitudes.
“We feel this is the right attitude to it, not just having them all in the city core, to ensure our whole city is covered.”
A vote was recorded on the Green proposal, with 13 members in support, and 47 against. The Sinn Féin proposal was subsequently carried.
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