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You and Yours: Bins, Plastic in fashion, Care home dentists

29/08/2019

Bins, Plastic in fashion, Care home dentists

BBC Radio 4 - You and Yours, Bins, Plastic in fashion, Care home dentists

Missed bin collections, plastic in clothes and a shortage of care home dentists.

The council criticised for not running a decent bin service, fashion designer Henry Holland on plastic in our clothes, and dental care for the elderly and disabled.

Birmingham City Council is criticised in a report out today for repeatedly failing to empty bins and then mishandling complaints from residents. The report from the Local Government Ombudsman says some people didn't have a bin collection for months and one person didn't have waste removed for a year. The council has now been ordered to pay compensation, ranging from £100 to £300, to 17 people. The Ombudsman has had 90 complaints this year about missed bin collections in Birmingham. That's as many as it's had about council tax for the whole of England. Birmingham Council acknowledges it should have done more and says it's continuing to bring in new ways of working for their crews.

We speak to the fashion designer, Henry Holland, about the amount of plastic in our clothes. The most popular outfit in Britain today - a t-shirt, jeans and trainers - contains the same amount of plastic as 25 bottles. While people worry now about single-use plastic bottles and bags and drinking straws, nine out of ten have no idea that there's plastic in their clothes. The findings are from a study published today by ASDA Opticians about people's attitudes to sustainable fashion.

We investigate the difficulties facing elderly and disabled people in getting dental treatment. According to NHS figures from a Freedom of Information request by the British Dental Association, only one in every hundred people who need a home visit from an NHS dentist is likely to get one. The number of visits being commissioned by the NHS is falling year on year. Between 2017 and 2018, just 1.27 per cent of eligible people with disabilities and health issues were able to get dental treatment outside a surgery. 

Presenter: Winifred Robinson
Producer: Tara Holmes

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