Kennet District Council has confirmed that there are no “bugs” or surveillance devices in the wheeled bins. All there is, is an inert chip with a simple number. The same number as on the side of the bin. The chips cannot do anything. They cannot weigh or in any way analyse the contents of the bin. They do not contain nor can they obtain any information about you or your household. Their purpose is simply to make identification of a bin easier and quicker if needed.
With regard to the technology involved, the public have clearly been misinformed by the tabloid newspapers during recent press coverage. For the record the facts are;
- Kennet District Council does not have any vehicle or handheld monitors to read the identification chips located within the bins. In effect the identification chips are lying dormant in the wheelie bins.
- In the event that the identification chips are read. The only information the identification chips contain a unique reference number (which is also etched on the side of the wheelie bin) which would be logged against a house number.
- The Identification chips do not contain any personal or any other information nor are they capable of spying on anyone.
- Kennet District Council does not weigh waste as it is tipped into the waste or the recycling lorries.
- Kennet District Council does not have the power to introduce charging for domestic waste only the Government can make that decision.
Kennet District Council is far from being the first council to purchase wheeled bins with identification chips in them, there are probably already many hundreds of thousands of chipped bins across the country.
Kennet District Council did not appreciate that the inclusion of an inert numeric chip might be an issue that could cause disquiet to some of it’s residents. It is unfortunate that the tabloid press and others have chosen to make mischief by giving the impression that these are bugs or surveillance devices when they are in fact inert numeric chips. There is no reason for anyone to be alarmed and the Council is sorry if anyone has been alarmed by the manner in which this has been sensationalised by the press and the media.
Kennet District Council used £726,000 of funding from the Wiltshire County Council to purchase wheelie bins for every household within the district to facilitate the introduction of Alternate Weekly Collections. The identification chip was an optional extra supplied by the manufacturer of the wheelie-bins and officers decided to go ahead with the purchase of this option after giving full consideration to possible future requirements. The decision to purchase these bins was entirely sensible, as the chips offered the technology to help track lost or stolen bins in the future.
Furthermore, looking to the future including the inert numeric chips is sensible risk management. There is a national debate about how to minimise waste and increase recycling in the future. Part of that debate is the proposal being actively considered by the Government to charge by weight for domestic refuse. Kennet District Council is not involved in that debate but is aware of it. In the event that the Government decided to introduce charges for the collection of household waste, it would save the Kennet council tax payer many thousands of pounds for either new bins or the retrospective fitting of the identification chips and so buying the bins with the identification chips is a prudent precaution.
Cllr Chris Humphries (leader of the Council) said;
“The council did not make a secret of the identification chips in the bins and in the lead up to the introduction of Alternate Weekly Collections officers spoke quite openly about the identification chips at parish, town council and residents forum meetings, indeed the identification chips in the bins is not ‘new news’ it was shared with the local press and was reported in the Andover Advertiser on the 19th May 2006. The council’s contact centre has been furnished with information about the identification chips for several months now and has willingly passed on information to our residents about them”. |