A council in southern England has denied claims that it routes through residents’ rubbish in order to find out more about them. Bracknell Forest Council was last week named in the national media as one local authority that takes such measures in order to find out if wealthy and poor households or people from different ethnic groups throw out different waste.
In a report by online publication Get Bracknell, leader of Bracknell Forest Council, Paul Bettison, rubbished the claims, but admitted that the council does look at the contents of a sample number of bins to find out whether people are recycling or not.
Mr Bettison said the authority employs companies who will empty bins from randomly chosen streets into a separate white van and see what they find. This, he said, helps them figure out which areas and recycling and which areas need extra help such as leafleting.
He added that if the council wanted to build up personal profiles of their residents they would simply go to their street and look at their houses and cars. He went on to say that the council does not employ such measures either, but that to cut the amount of rubbish being sent from the area to landfill, they need to find out who is not recycling.
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