Madam,

I drove into Aberystwyth one morning last week and was appalled by the state of the roads and pavements. They were covered in waste from ripped bin bags. The dustmen were going around collecting bags, and others were picking up the scattered litter. It was not a good advertisement for the town.

The usual response is to blame the council, but the problem is clearly the seagulls, not councillors. Several months ago it was suggested that the seagull-proof bags adopted by Pembrokeshire should be introduced, which seems an eminently sensible suggestion. However, at the time, you quoted Cllr Alun Williams, Ceredigion County Council’s Cabinet member for waste, as saying that the separate collection of food waste should negate the need for such bags. He said: “Ceredigion is always open to new ideas but the current approach is to encourage residents to make full use of the weekly food waste collection.”

It would seem that the current approach is failing miserably, so perhaps Ceredigion should be open to a new idea. It’s good to have separate food waste collections, but there will always be situations where a small element of food waste ends up in black bags (or even, wrongly, the clear bags) - paper that has held food for example, and odd occasions when naughty people don’t put all their food waste into the food bin (none of us are perfect). Ceredigion council needs to accept reality.

It is time to adopt the gull-proof bags. The advantages are many. Apart from clean streets, householders will be able to put bags out the night before without any risk of seagull attack. A few gull bags also look tidier than a pile of black bags. Cllr Williams’ objections to ‘hessian sacks’ (actually rectangular woven plastic bags, with weights to stop them blowing around) were addressed in the article.

The cost should not be an issue, given the extra costs now incurred cleaning up after the gulls. Pembrokeshire are selling them for £5.30 each. Perhaps a (brief) trial could be done by issuing them to dwellings and businesses in an area of town most affected by the problem?

Yours etc,

Nigel A Callaghan, Taliesin.

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