Bristol: Could crooks spend their community service time digging out weeds?

Some criminals may have to dig out weeds during their community service.

Transcript

00:00In Bristol, offenders doing community service will soon be put to work pulling weeds by hand,

00:06part of a council effort to cut down on the use of a potentially harmful weed killer.

00:11Bristol City Council is phasing out its use of glyphosate, a common herbicide linked in some

00:18studies to cancer and believed to pose risks to bees. Instead of spraying the chemical on pavements,

00:25the city will test a new approach using offenders on community payback schemes to remove weeds

00:31manually. The council says spraying glyphosate across the city costs around £150,000 a year.

00:40Hiring staff to do the work by hand would cost almost £1 million, so the trial aims to find

00:46cheaper alternatives to protect both health and the environment. It's part of a wider weed

00:51management policy that includes giving residents in some areas the choice to opt out of weed spraying

00:57altogether. Where the chemical is still used, the council says it will apply only the minimum

01:03effective dose and frequency. Ken Lawson, the council's head of waste, said what we're looking

01:10to do is have an adoption scheme where residents can choose to manage the weeds on their street

01:15and they take the responsibility for that. He added that we're looking to utilise the

01:20probation service to dig out across the city. We're looking at other activities to reduce the

01:26financial burden to move to a manual approach. Over the past five years, the council has cut

01:32pesticide use by 42%. Officials say the reduction is driven by fears of an ecological emergency,

01:39with falling insect populations threatening wider ecosystems.