Business owners and residents say they have discovered other people’s rubbish, including bags containing needles, dumped on their premises as chaos from the Birmingham bin strike continues.
Refuse workers who are members of the Unite union launched an all-out strike last month in a dispute over pay and jobs, which has led to increasing concerns over public health.
As 17,000 tonnes of rubbish built up on the streets, some residents have resorted to disposing of their waste on other people’s premises.
Lydia Nirwan, owner of Manicured beauty salon in Northfield, returned rubbish to people she caught on CCTV footage dumping waste in her skip.
Lydia Nirwan said she found a bag full of needles dumped in her skip (Photo: Supplied)Msd Nirwan paid for the skip to dispose of bulky waste from the refurbishment of the salon she opened eight years ago.
Hours after it arrived on 24 March, Ms Nirwan spotted a man dumping several black bin bags of rubbish and cardboard boxes into it.
“It got delivered about three o’clock in the afternoon and then at quarter to 11 on the night, there was a man dumping like seven bin bags in my skip,” she told The i Paper.
“I saw the footage at, I think it was one o’clock in the morning, was really angry, posted it on Facebook and then wrote my little paragraph with it.”
When Ms Nirwan arrived at the salon the following day to do some decorating she made a gruesome discovery.
“Me and my dad actually went through the bin bags…it was full of needles and loads of like skin wipes as well,” she said.
“I’m trying to take this rubbish out because, obviously, I need to use my skip that I’ve paid for and not have everyone else’s rubbish in there.
“It’s really dangerous. I could have cut myself when I was rummaging through those bags.”
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Ms Nirwan said although she did not technically need to go through the waste while removing it, she wanted to see if any personal details had been left behind so she could report the incident to the police.
On another occasion, while taking a client’s payment, Ms Nirwan saw a teenager who appeared to have been directed by an adult he was with to drop a bag of rubbish in the skip.
She promptly left the salon and returned it to him.
“He just said, ‘Oh, I thought it was a public skip’. I’ve never heard of a public skip in my life, to be honest,” she said.
On another occasion, a woman was captured putting rubbish in the skip.
Ms Nirwan said: “She’d purposely drove past and drove on to the shop front and got her rubbish out of her car boot to then dump it in my skip. And she’d ripped her address off the box, ripped up any letters with her address in there, but had left her NHS prescription.
“Rather than take that to the police, I decided to take matters into my own hands and I dropped the box of rubbish off at her house on her doorstep. I didn’t ring the bell. I just literally left it on her doorstep.”
‘It’s not giving Birmingham a good name’
Susan Clothier, who lives in neighbouring Sandwell, believes the strike is the reason why someone threw their household rubbish in her garden waste bin.
“I went to put some garden waste in and I found there was a black bin bag, and I looked in it and it was all full of somebody’s rubbish,” she told The i Paper.
“I sorted it and put it into the right places in my dustbin, but it must have been somebody from Birmingham who just wanted to get rid of a dustbin load of rubbish.”
“Nothing like that’s ever happened before.”
Ms Nirwan pays £150 for around 50 council issued bin bags and collection but says during the strike action she and other neighbouring businesses, including a café, have gone without their rubbish collected for weeks, at times.
“It is a bit of a joke at the moment when, obviously, it’s not being collected at all and then we’re paying for a service and nothing’s happening and it’s just messy and horrible.”
She said feels disappointed by the police, public and council response to the industrial action.
“And it’s disappointing that they’re letting our streets look like this.
“It’s discouraging. It’s not nice. It’s not giving Birmingham a good look or a good name.”
Birmingham Council was contacted for comment.
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