Eric Pickles and the Disappearing Weekly Collections

I saw a press report on Saturday making more claims about rubbish collections.  It struck me as the latest stage in Eric Pickles mendacious campaign on the subject.  Before we get to it, let's do a quick reminder about alternate weekly collections.

Councils like alternate weekly collections because they greatly increase the amount of recycling collections.  This helps reduce the amount sent to landfill, which is hideously expensive and becoming more so.  Landfill waste is also a big producer of methane, a leading greenhouse gas, since it has a high proportion of food waste which rots in the ground.  Recycling waste, by contrast, can actually generate money as under some deals, companies are willing to pay for such raw materials.

Alternate weekly collections are therefore widely used by Councils of all political colours, including (since 2011) Brent.

Eric Pickles was going to change all that.  Despite austerity, he found £250 million to try to pay Councils to reintroduce weekly collections and therefore send more waste to landfill.  Here is the Daily Mail spin at the time.

Since it cost far more to take Eric Pickles' bribe than refuse it, most Councils refused.

 A furious Eric Pickles threatened to force councils to adopt his favoured vanity project.  So much for localism.  Of course, many of these authorities are Tory run.

Which brings me back to the Saturday article.  It looks like the Eric Pickles lie machine has finally realised that real life is going to win.  Alternate weekly collections are just a far more effective form of rubbish collection, a much better deal for the taxpayer, and much better for the environment.  Rather than plead mea culpa, what does he do?

Blame Europe.

Instead of admitting that he has been scaremongering and misleading all this time, he is now pretending it is all down to the EU, which is now said to be forcing alternate weekly collections.

How typically dishonest.

Presumably the latest remarks on bin housing are a further distraction technique.  Since it is well known that adequate rubbish disposal is part of the planning process already.