A council is mulling spending £350,000 to change bin lids so locals don’t get muddled up as new ones are introduced. East Suffolk council chiefs are worried residents may be confused by their bins as another one is added.
The scheme, which starts next year, will see an extra bin used just for waste paper and card. The bin will be grey with a green lid. But council bosses are concerned locals might get them jumbled up with their garden waste bins, which are completely green.
In a bid to help, the local authority is proposing to change garden bin lids to brown. The change will require a new contract and the council said “initial enquiries” indicated buying enough brown lids would cost about £300,000, with “distribution and fitting” adding £50,000 to the bill.
East Suffolk’s cabinet chiefs will decide on the proposal at a meeting on Tuesday (Oct 7). The council has said part of the reason for the extra bin is that it has to meet national targets to divert 65% of waste to recycling by 2035. It also wants to make savings.
The town hall insisted an extra recycling bin will “transform” the quality of materials available for reuse, bringing “huge” benefits to the environment as less paper and card is contaminated by other items.
News of the proposal led to criticism of the council, which is led by a coalition of Greens, Lib-Dems and Independents, from an opposition councillor.
Conservative councillor James Mallinder told the BBC that the proposal was “nonsense”. He said: “Nobody is going to remember, this is going to be very confusing and it is not going to make a simple process.”
There was also anger on social media. One X-user fumed from an account named Ash: “We’ve all heard about #NFN meaning Normal For Norfolk, but this is NFES (Normal for East Suffolk)”.
“Bungling inept fools @EastSuffolk aka East Suffolk Council propose p****** £350k up the wall to change bin lids, when they could have specified at tendering stage”.
A second X-user, Sandy Tregent, suggested the region needed a cost-cutting DOGE unit akin to Reform UK’s, which is based on the Department of Government Efficiency set up by Elon Musk in the United States.
They commented: “East Suffolk Council are spending 350,000 quid of our money on changing the colour of the lids on our garden waste bins. We need Reform DOGE here in Suffolk”.
Another X-user, MTChandler, shot back: “You’ve deliberately misrepresented… what East Suffolk Council are doing. They’ve introduced a more efficient way to collect recyclable material and Zia Yusuf’s DOGE thing has done sweet FA and seems to have ceased to exist”.
Mr Yusuf has spearheaded Reform UK efforts to slash “wasteful spending” at the local authorities the outfit controls, to varying degrees of success.
A council spokesperson said the lid-colour proposal was the most cost-effective way to bring the bins in line with the rest of the county where collections and colours are to be standardised.
They added: “Better Recycling, which is being launched across Suffolk next year, will increase the amount of waste residents will be able to recycle at home and reduce confusion over what can be collected, and which bin should be used.
“These changes, if approved, will be funded through the Better Recycling funding provided by Defra and will not impact spending on other essential council services.”