Bins should be moved to the entrances where they are easier to access and to empty more regularly. This will help with growing litter, pest, and damage problems.
Rat populations have increased dramatically in parks and around town centres.
Temporary measures like baiting can help but are much more effective as part of a wider program that tackles the root of the problem: food sources. Many park bins in RBWM are low and open, allowing easy access to rats, and some blow out in the wind.
Bigger, higher bins with small openings are better.
Counter-intuitively:
- Bins with lids make the problem worse. The bin lids get dirty and residents become reluctant to touch them. We then get anti-social behaviour like leaving litter next to or on top of bins. The mess attracts more mess as the ‘broken windows’ effect sets in.
- Having more bins in parks doesn’t help: there is always a small minority who will treat a bin as a rough target, and adding bins increases the spread of litter around the park.
- Moving bins out of the interior doesn’t make litter problem worse. Responsible people will carry their litter to the nearest bin anyway, and having bins at every entrance/exit to the park increased the ‘legibility’ of litter disposal – everyone always knows where to find a bin without looking or thinking about it. The inevitable litter around bins from the anti-social minority is then taken out of the interior of the parks. The park then looks better, and any mess is easier and quicker to clear up
Parks like Kidwells in Maidenhead and Alexandra Gardens in Windsor should look special, but the contractor vehicles churn up the turf next to the paths in wet weather.
Forcing the contractors to empty bins on foot or use smaller specialised vehicles instead of their standard dropside Transits is going to push costs up significantly.
Again, moving bins to the entrances solves the problem.
As Cabinet Member responsible for parks, I pushed for this radical change to be piloted. In a park like Kidwells, it would look like this:
The overall bin capacity would be kept the same, multiple problems would be fixed or made less severe, and emptying bins would be cheaper and more efficient. From outside the administration I am still pushing for this to be trialled and rolled out across the borough if trials are successful.