3 December 2018

Bin there, not done that


For the last week Mr Mustard has been trying to get Barnet Council's twitter account to tell him how many bin lorries there are. The unwritten but self evident ethos of the twitter account is that Barnet Council only ever tweet good news. Consequently, it is to be inferred that the council have an inadequate number of bin lorries. That is a question which may get answered later but Mr Mustard wants to get on and blog about bins, although bingate may go on for some time, despite what the vlogger Richard Cornelius had to say on youtube.
Mr Mustard does like to get his facts right but if Barnet Council want to treat a simple statistic such as the number of bin lorries as a matter of state secrecy he will just have to estimate as best he can. A bin man (not ruling this out as a career choice for ladies but don't believe there are any currently acting as loaders or drivers) will possibly confirm the facts in the comments box below.

The correspondence with the Mayor of London included the statistic that 12 loaders could be saved who dealt with the food waste bins, one for each bin round, so we have 12 lorries for black bin collection (some bins have become grey with old age). The latest reorganisation, or shambles as it is known in homes across Barnet, elicited the additional fact that blue bin recycling rounds and black bin rounds are the same, so there must be 12 lorries for blue bin collection. It isn't so much the number of lorries as spare ones will be needed to cover for breakdowns, servicing and accidents etc. as the number of collection rounds which is important. 

Now to Mr Mustard's reckoning as to why the new system isn't working and will never work 100%.

If the above numbers are correct each crew is expected to collect:

359,000 bins a week, as per Richard above, which divided by 5 days

= 72,000 bins a day, which divided by 24 lorries

= 3,000 bins a day per team (lorry) with 2 loading

= 1,500 bins per person, who usually does 2 bins at a time (if the street layout permits)
= 750 repetitions in 7.5 hours

= 100 reps an hour or a pair of bins being rounded up, moved, tipped and returned to the property/pavement

A pair of bins being tipped every 36 seconds.

That does not look possible. The team I saw this week had a driver + 2 and more staff doesn't make much sense as only 2 bins can be tipped at the same time so you have two on the lorry with 2 more being picked up / returned at the same time.

Of course not all bins are put out every week but still, to expect that many collections day in and day out will lead to binman burnout.

Please rubbish my figures if they are wrong.

The article from Barnet First claism the changes are to make the service more efficient (not happened) effective (not happened) and economical (not happened either due to up to £20,000 a week of extra costs being incurred for 98% of a service).

Mr Mustard thinks, and the budget cuts dictate, that the changes were motivated entirely by the need to save money but the budget has been cut at the same time as the number of proeprties in barnet has increased. You can only ever stretch an elastic band so far before it breaks and that is the point we have reached with bins.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

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