Edinburgh bin hubs: Campaigners say rules must be relaxed so bins are not right in front of people's doors
Residents campaigning against badly located bin hubs have carried out a survey and claim as many as one-third of the hubs in their part of Edinburgh are right outside people’s front doors and windows.
And they say in many cases there are better alternative locations nearby.
Now the South Meadows Action Group, centred on Marchmont and Sciennes, is calling for the council to relax the rules which insist no-one should have to walk more than 100 metres or cross the road to reach a bin hub.
One resident with a bin hub right outside her home is 90-year-old Sarah Sandow, who now has to put up with constant noise, including people dumping bottles in the glass recycling bin, and the smell of the food recycling bin.
She has lived in her main door, ground floor flat in Marchmont Crescent for 23 years and has always enjoyed her front garden, which she designed specially so she could sit out in it. “I still try to sit out in the garden, but it’s not what it used to be,” she said.
“I got somebody to put up a fence which hides the bins up to a point, but it doesn’t do much about the noise, which is constant. There’s the noise of the people who come to empty the bins every other day and the noise of the people using the bins to fill up with their rubbish - open and shut, open and shut all day long. It’s very unpleasant really. I don’t think they should be there at all.”
She says there is a much more suitable place for the bins just across the road, but the council won’t relocate them.
"The food bin is the one that annoys me most because I think it’s really unpleasant to have that there. It’s very smelly.
"It’s a great shame because it’s a nice street. It certainly spoils the ambience."
The South Meadows Action Group, which was formed after a public meeting in April, says people’s concerns about the bin hubs is not a NIMBY response and they appreciate the need for waste collection and recycling, but they believe the council’s approach has been “high-handed, inflexible and insensitive”.
The group looked at all 96 bin hubs in the Marchmont/Sciennes ward and concluded that 39 - one in four - were in unsuitable locations, with 33 of them - one-third - placed directly in front of residential doorways.
The survey also claimed as many as 32 hubs could easily be relocated on the opposite side of the street in order to reduce the negative impact without transferring the problem to other residential properties.
But the group says the current requirement that residents should not cross the road to access the bins is limiting a lot of reasonable options and should be relaxed.
The issue of bin hubs is due to be discussed at a workshop on Monday, to be attended by councillors, officials, community councillors and possibly MSPs. But residents’ groups have not been invited.
Nick Hepworth, one of the organisers of the South Meadows Action Group, said: “We would have liked to have attended the workshop to put forward our constructive recommendations and were disappointed to learn it was a closed door meeting.”
But he said it was still an important opportunity to improve the council’s approach and remedy the situation.
Dr Hepworth said: “Everyone understands the need for bins and recycling but Edinburgh Council has messed this up from Day 1. The consultants they used to locate the new bins used a computer algorithm instead of common sense which has led to a third of the bin hubs – a wall of stinky noisy bins 8 metres long and 1.7 metres high – being put in completely ridiculous places – directly outside peoples’ front doors and bedroom windows instead of in low impact alternative places which wouldn’t bother anybody.
“The noise created by a glass recycling bin being emptied is the same as a pneumatic drill and is well over the statutory noise nuisance limits – so why is the council putting one outside my kid’s bedroom window?
“We’re not alone – people across Edinburgh are furious about this lack of consideration and the arrogance of the council. They need to stop and listen to the people they are there to serve, and simply use some common sense to solve this city-wide scandal.”