Bristol students 'dumped rubbish' complaints rise

Some rubbish piles include electronic items, furniture or hazardous waste

End-of-term complaints about students dumping rubbish have risen by up to 200 a week, Bristol City Council has said.

The problem increases in June as students clear out their rented homes at the end of the academic year.

According to the authority, there are 50,000 university students in the city, with 40,000 in rented accommodation. <itemMeta>news/uk-england-bristol-18681880</itemMeta>

The Liberal Democrat councillor responsible for waste, Gary Hopkins, said clearing up the rubbish required "a fair amount of resource".

'Sizable bill'

"When they leave, the vast majority unfortunately just want to dump the stuff and go and don't give a huge amount of pre-thought about how it can easily be dealt with," he said.

"From our point of view it's a very sizable bill and it is very annoying for the residents."

Mr Hopkins added that after collecting the waste it still had to be treated and checked through.

In some cases, weekly waste collections cannot help because the rubbish contains electronic equipment, furniture or other hazardous waste which require a special collection.

Manny Pisani, chairman of the Westcountry Landlords Association, said students should take their rubbish with them.

"There is, or should be, a facility where the local authorities can actually collect items of large bulky items of waste from the residents.

"Sometimes it isn't actually rubbish because there is microwaves or toasters that might work."

'Penalise'

The universities in Bristol said they were working with the city council to try to prevent the issue

The University of the West of England said it was aware of the problem, as was Bristol University, and it was working "proactively together" with the city council to try to prevent it.

It said a campaign last year reduced complaints by 28% and helped to raise more than £10,000 in donated student goods to St Peters Hospice.

Pru Archer, head of accommodation services at Bristol University, said so far this year they had visited 568 student households to offer advice.

"We ran the student summer clearout campaign and provided everybody with recycling packs and special bags that the council would collect as extra rubbish," she added.

"If somebody has a problem with rubbish we will contact the students and advise them what they should be doing, and if they repeatedly fail to act responsibly then there are measures we can take to penalise them."