Satisfied with rubbish

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33527, 7 May 1974, Page 1

Satisfied with rubbish

After nearly five weeks of use of the new plastic rubbish bags in Christchurch city areas, the city engineer (Mr P. G. Scoular) yesterday said he was satisfied with the results of the change from tins.

Most of the city’s 65 dustmen are also said to be pleased with the way things have gone, although there is some debate among them as to whether paper bags would be preferable to plastic. The bag system has made the dustmen’s work a lot cleaner than before, and also considerably safer; although a couple of accidents were caused by broken glass in bags early in April, accidents since then have been well below the usual level with tins. Under the old system, one

man in every two suffered a “lost time” injury every year, many of them caused by slipping when carrying or catching tins, injuries when lifting tins, being hit by tins, and by cuts inflicted by tins or their contents.

The lot of the dustmen, who are paid about $65 gross a week including bonuses and allowance?, has been improved by the introduction of bags. But although the job is now safer, cleaner, and quicker, it seems that more rubbish is now being put out than was the case when householders were restricted to two tins a household. There have been cases of as many as 20 bags being put out from one house, although not as a regular practice.

If the use of bags was speeding the work of collection as much as is hoped, the result would be a cash saving to the city and its ratepayers,

Mr Scoular said yesterday. The engineers would look at the various collection rounds again in a couple of months to see if any changes were warranted, he said. Mr Scoular said there was no doubt that the city’s streets were much cleaner since the bags went into use, and he said it was hoped that making the job itself cleaner might help relieve the chronic shortage of applications for the job which had plagued the council in the past. The turnover of men is high — as high as 300 per cent a year. This turnover has generally been restricted to about half the city’s force, so if the 30-odd “stayers” are excepted, city dustmen stay with the job no more than about six weeks apiece.

Mr Scoular said householders had reported some problems with the plastic bags tearing, “but largely it

is a question of people getting used to them. If they are properly used there is no great problem, and most people seem to be managing very well.” Some householders had trouble with the tie tops of the bags, he said, and some of these tops were "a bit flimsy,” although the bags had been manufactured to local and United States standards.

Bags which were to be suspended from frames had to be held by clips, he said, but spring-type clothes-pegs could be used for this. Mr Scoular discounted re-i ports that residents in some streets had been piling the; bags up in one heap to make: them easier to collect. In fact, the council’s collectors often sent one man on ahead of the truck to do this. “But we’d be delighted if people did do it,” he said with a laugh.