A heated debate erupted on Good Morning Britain as the panel discussed plans by some councils to reduce black bin collections to once a month. Lynsey Crombie, known as the “Queen of Clean,” warned that such a move would lead to widespread discontent, an increase in fly-tipping, and people attempting to dispose of household waste in recycling bins.
However, environmentalist Donnachadh McCarthy vehemently disagreed, labeling her concerns as “ridiculous.”
He claimed that, thanks to his diligent recycling and waste reduction efforts, he only generates a small bag of household waste every three months, which he disposes of in a neighbour’s bin. The discussion was sparked by Bristol’s announcement that it intends to become the first English council to adopt a four-weekly black bin collection schedule.
The Green-led council expects this change to yield annual savings of over £2m and help reverse a decline in recycling rates. Bristol believes it would be the first council in England to implement such a system, amidst a broader push for councils nationwide to revamp their waste collection practices.
During the debate, Susanna asked Donnachadh, “You are in favour of this. How often is your rubbish put out? ” He replied, “I haven’t had a black bin since 1994. I produce around a shopping bag of rubbish every 3 months.”, reports .
Bin collections in Bristol could be cut to once a month under new plans being considered by the City Council. They say the change would encourage recycling and save more than £2 million a year.Environmentalist Donnachadh McCarthy and TV’s ‘Queen of Clean’ Lynsey Crombie debate.
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB)
Susanna then inquired, “OK, who lives in your house? ” He responded: “I’m one person. So I don’t actually have a wheelie bin and the lady next door allows me to put my little bag every 3 months into her bin because actually what we need to be doing is reducing the amount of waste we’re producing. So for example, we, throw away 80 million shaving foam cans a year.
“We throw away 240 million plastic toothbrushes a year and all we need to be doing is throwing away the head and keeping the handle. So all we need to be doing is reducing the waste. Now there’s a big financial issue here. We spend £13 billion a year, the government does on throwing away our waste.
“Now that money could be used for looking after social welfare for kids with special needs, for pensioners. Every household, Lynsey, it costs £480 a year to deal with our waste. Now that’s between 18% and 43% of our waste. So what we need to be doing and what the real problem is they’re saying they’re reducing the bin collections to a week to once a month. They’re not. They’re going to have weekly collection for food. And a weekly collection for recycling and there’s almost nothing left.”
Lynsey queried: “What about if they’re in a household you’ve got small children and there’s nappies that need disposing of. These go in the black bin. If you’ve got there are 3 children under 5 that aren’t potty trained. Where do these go?”
‘Queen of Clean’ Lynsey Crombie and environmentalist Donnachadh McCarthy clashed on GMB over Bristol bin plan (Image: ITV)
During a heated debate over waste collection frequencies, Mr McCarthy stated: “If you look up the story, they’re going to collect the food every week and they’re going to collect the nappies every week.”
Lynsey swiftly responded with concerns about practicality: “You’d need another bin then for nappies bin on your driveway and that’s more mess.”
Veteran broadcaster Richard Madeley didn’t hold back, addressing guest Donnachadh McCarthy: “Just before you give us more examples of how brilliant at not creating any rubbish, and we all bow to that. Let’s just say to you that in Fife, which is the borough in Scotland where they’ve tried this out, it didn’t really work properly. They had monthly collections and after a while they’ve just found they had to have general rubbish collections every two weeks, it wasn’t working.”
Madeley further noted the worrying outcome elsewhere: “And in Conwy in Wales, they found that, fly tipping has gone up by 16%.”
Donnachadh questioned the link between waste policy and illegal dumping: “Why would fly tipping come up? Fly tipping is usually commercial people dumping waste.”
Lynsey suggested such measures might encourage public littering: “People would just get even more lazy with this system. They’d literally be using public bins.”
Donnachadh rebutted the impracticality: “So you’d go out to drive go down the road and you empty it into a bin – nobody’s going to do that – that’s ridiculous.”
Lynsey anticipated a negative impact on recycling efforts: “I think people will stop recycling. They’re gonna think there’s a space in my green bin, so I might as well put the waste that should go in the black bin in the green bin and hide it and just make the situation worse. So when it gets to the recycling centre, the job is then doubled because people are going to rebel against this system.”