Why Have Attacks on Bin Men Almost Doubled in 3 Years?

The number of incidents involving bin men being attacked by the public has almost doubled in 3 years, from 159 in 2013 to 309 so far in 2016.

This information was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Daily Mail. In this report, a number of specific incidents are detailed, including incidents where bin men have been threatened with weapons and hit directly. Examples cited are: someone head-butting a bin man in Dudley, a Samurai sword wielded in Birmingham and a gun in Manchester all used to threaten or intimidate bin men.

This is all scary stuff so it begs the question…

Why is this happening?

The Local Government Authority (LGA), said to the Daily Mail that it believes that people prosecuted for attacks on bin men should go to prison. A spokesman for the LGA added that “The LGA’s polling shows more than eight in ten of the public are happy with the way their bins are collected.”

Heather Wakefield, from the Unison union, says that “Residents might feel irritated that their bins are not being emptied as often or that they now have to pay for garden waste to be taken away, but it’s not the fault of refuse collectors nor that of the local authority.”

What Heather Wakefield says is true, however the people who make the decisions regarding bin collections are rarely seen or heard from by the public. As a result, people take out their frustrations of those they do see, the frontline bin men. Very few people, as frustrated and annoyed as they are, threatens someone with a Samurai sword however, which is simply an isolated incident.

Of course, it’s not the extreme cases that has driven up the number of cases of bin men attacks. It’s the changes to the way bin men now operate. Once upon a time, households only had a standard, grey bin which was emptied once a week. Pretty straight forward. Nowadays, households have up to four bins: grey (or purple if you’re in Liverpool), blue, green and brown.

Increasing the total number of bins to four has basically quadrupled the work of the bin men, which in turn increases the waste at rubbish tips. There’s a reason that certain councils have introduced quotas on recycling and attempted to reduce the amount of waste by making bins smaller, around half the size. This has played a part in the number of incidents with bin men too.

If you think about this like this, when households only had one bin, it was emptied every week. Then, when the others were introduced, that was reduced to once a fortnight, as there is a rota as to what bin is emptied when. Now, with bins being changed for ones about half the size, this means for general waste that people are expected to have a quarter of what they used to. Of course, some is mitigated by the other bins since not everything is thrown into one bin now. But, it’s easy to see why people would be annoyed.

How much of this is the bin men’s fault? None. Simple as that. They are probably just as frustrated as having their workload increased with collecting two bins instead of one a week and doubling the time needed to complete their job. Do they get paid double for this? We know the answer to that.

It’s going to come down to an understanding between all parties and the reasoning for the changes. Resisting change is natural but it would make everyone’s lives easier if there was more transparency as to what’s going on, and why.

Source: CIWM