Palmer Park #rdg bin reductions

Due to government cuts, the council is looking at removing some of the bins from Palmer Park. More detail on this below. Let us know how this goes, the earlier we identify any problems the better.

The map above shows bins in Palmer Park as red circles. Those with a white cross are going. Click on the map to get a bigger version of it.

From the council: "Palmer Park currently has 72 waste bins, 68 of which are managed by Parks. By contrast, Reading’s largest park, Prospect Park, has 19 bins; other large parks used for dog-walking as well as sports, like Mapledurham, Cintra and Kensington Road have 14 bins each. Most parks have many fewer than this, and litter is no more of a problem where there are fewer bins. The issue at Palmer Park is that many bins are not used, rather than that there are insufficient of them. Clearly, compared with all other parks in Reading, 72 bins is excessive, with attendant costs for both the Council’s budget and the environment.

As mentioned, 68 of the 72 bins are managed by Parks. This means that

·         Every day we replace 68 green bags
·         Over a 7-day week, this totals of 476 green bags
·         As we do this every day of the year except Christmas Day, this total comes to 24,752 green bags
·         Each green bag costs 17p; so the green-bag cost to the Council for this site alone is £4,207.84

In addition, it takes an excessive amount of staff time to visit every bin and change the bag. On a busy weekend, it can take four hours to clear the bins and pick up any litter, meaning that some other parks on the round do not get visited.

If every bin were full every day, there may be some justification for this cost, but it is possible that many bins will have only one item. Some bins in Palmer Park are only a few metres apart. We actually need to rationalise the number, so that there is only one bin on a stretch of path.

From many years of emptying bins, we know which are the most well-used. We propose to take out first the infrequently used bins as well as those that are within 50m of another bin, and then to phase any further rationalisation over the course of the next year or two, when we have monitored changes in use and in litter across the park. Although dog waste can now be put in regular bins, we will leave in place well-used dog bins as a convenience to dog-walkers."