Little disturbs the tranquillity of the quiet residential streets of Edinburgh’s Georgian New Town, with its imposing sandstone townhouses and pristine private gardens.
The privileged residents of this well-heeled enclave are rightly proud of living in a Unesco World Heritage Site and have always — discreetly — been ferocious guardians of its appearance and heritage. Dirty washing has rarely been aired in public.
Now, however, open conflict has arrived. The cause? Passionate arguments over how to dispose of waste in a largely affluent area where collective living in lavish, but often shared, buildings is commonplace.
It’s a divide that has split along territorial and demographic lines, with the mainly older permanent residents of the east-west townhouses — the homes with the highest architectural value — preferring to continue to hang what they consider to be less offensive black rubbish sacks on their iron railings for collection.
Trials have shown that a new canvas gull-proof version is successful in increasing recycling and stopping birds and animals from ripping them open, allowing rubbish to spill out in unsightly piles in front of the splendid residences.
Some 2,300 properties in an area of 16,000 properties have the gull-proof sacks, and the council is proposing to extend them to another 2,700 as part of long-running communal bin review.
Meanwhile, the younger and more transient population of the smaller north-south tenements are favouring rows of multi-coloured skips because they don’t have to store rubbish bags in their homes for long periods.
Joanna Mowat, a veteran Edinburgh councillor, described the factions as broadly divided into “Sackland” and “Binland”.
“It comes down to how much space you have to store your waste,” Mowat said.
“The east-west streets have the slightly bigger flats, with more established communities who prefer the gull-proof sacks, while the north-south streets are predominantly tenements with more transient populations, heavy traffic and footfall. They have a higher proportion of student flats and rentals who prefer the bins.”
Mowat acknowledges that “Sackland” and “Binland’ have their own requirements. “You get much better recycling with sacks but there are some very serious issues, which I have every sympathy for,” she said.
“People with medical conditions who have to dispose of adult nappies or stoma bags want them removed from the house as soon as possible. Parents will say the same about children’s nappies.”
As in most conflicts, battles are particularly fierce at the fringes, with “Binland” skips suspiciously overflowing at the border with “Sackland”, prompting accusations of rogue territorial incursions by supposed sack-lovers.
“There is a tension on the edge of ‘Sackland’ and ‘Binland’ where bins tend to get quite overused, maybe by people who are going away for a few days who will miss the sack collection days,” Mowat said.
“The biggest issue is probably the student clear-outs at the end of term. We have tried to resolve it over the years but Edinburgh is a great one for reinventing the wheel on an annual basis. Like we don’t have anything else to do.”
Deirdre Henderson, a former community councillor who moved out of the New Town in December, added: “People are being very territorial about the bins on their streets, dissuading others from other blocks depositing rubbish in ‘their’ bins.”
The New Town deserves its heritage status. Originally envisioned by James Craig, a talented young architect who won a public competition to design a new suburb in 1766, it is recognised globally as a site of “remarkable 18th and 19th-century town planning”.
The better streets, where many homes can cost in excess of £1 million, are the heart of “Sackland”.
Opponents of communal bins — groups of six every 100 metres — argue that the black gull-proof sacks for landfill, green ones for mixed recycling, a plastic box for glass and a small bin for food waste, put out for kerbside collection on set days do not destroy the streetscape.
The opposite view from those who may be forced to switch and prefer street-sited bins argue that having to store rubbish in a flat until collection day would be smelly, unhygienic and impractical.
It’s a minefield for city planners, who know through experience that New Town community councils and residents’ associations — peopled by judges, lawyers, senior government officials and business leaders who know their way around petty bureaucracy — are tough to tangle with.
New Town and Broughton community council (NTBCC) crowdfunded more than £12,500 to commission a heritage impact assessment to outline the impact the skips would have on the New Town’s Unesco status. Some individual donors contributed up to £2,000.
When the tide turned towards the sacks, the “Binlanders” mounted their own campaign, particularly around Broughton Place and Barony Street, where tenement-dwellers are particularly resistant to the encroaching sacks.
Mike Birch, secretary of NTBCC, and Fiona Banatvala, representative for the Moray Feu Neighbourhood Association, insisted that the row was “not about a class war or bin war” but the protection of the World Heritage Site.
Their joint statement said: “There is no single right solution for waste collection but kerbside collection has been shown through an independent study to produce better recycling rates and also protect the World Heritage Site streetscape.”
NTBCC has impressed upon Sacklanders the need to avoid taking their rubbish into Binland, even in emergency situations, as it will inflame tensions and may lead the council to reconsider bringing in the skips.
“Educating all residents about the correct use of the waste collection facilities will help address this situation,” Banatvala said.
She rejected claims that students were scuppering the efficient administration of sacks, insisting that most now lived in purpose-built accommodation closer to campuses in the south of the capital and “there is no evidence that students are any worse or better than any other group of residents”.
The relatively recent proliferation of short-term lets, facilitated by sites such as AirBnB, has added another issue. Some residents complain they are destroying the community spirt of the New Town, including the rules of engagement on refuse disposal.
Edinburgh council is considering new regulations to remove short-term lets from the public collection service and to force them to sign trade-waste contracts like more formal hotel and accommodation providers.
A consultation on the communal bin review closed on Friday but NTBCC is unhappy about its administration.
In a terse 1,500-word letter to the council it said that the consultation had added to the confusion and led to further polarisation of residents, presenting skips or sacks as a binary choice rather than a tailored solution to neighbourhood circumstances.
Decisions by councillors are expected in June once the results of the review have been digested by council officers. Tensions may abate for a few weeks but, as ever in the New Town, they will continue to simmer under the surface.
