Forum Topic

Council claim recycling rate up to 55%

Hardly surprising since much of the general rubbish and food waste is now left lying around on the roads, pavements and green spaces instead of being collected. Still the important thing is hitting those arbitrary recycling targets; if the result is the borough turning into a rubbish-strewn third world crap hole that's a price worth paying for the ideologues of our moronic Labour council.

Peter Millman ● 3702d23 Comments

It might have been a good idea if they had put more effort into promoting the food waste collection - but everything seems to be done depending on what grants they win after competition from Central Government etc.  This is heavy so easily gives them an increase in recycling and goes to make biogas, electricity and fertiliser.  More and more items are now packaged in plastic rather than glass and there are fewer newspapers and newspaper readers which further reduces the weight of recycling.It depends on the amount of space that there is in a flat and how it is allocated.  Space like time is something that has to be made from what you have available.  Too often you hear "I don't have the time" or "I don't have the space".  It's a matter of somehow concentrating on finding it which is difficult when everybody is so busy fighting the rest of the bureaucracy of life.  The Council does not have a statutory obligation to collect garden waste which is why they charge for it and it is not supposed to go in the household waste collection - they say it will not be collected.  It is also unfair on those who do pay to be misusing the system.  The alternatives are to get your gardening contractor to take it away (it will be classed as business waste so will be chargeable), compost it yourself - there are reduced price composters usually for sale on the Council website, or take it yourself to the Reuse & Recycling Centre where it will be accepted without charge.It is worrying that assisted collections may not be happening where they are necessary due to a lack of coordination and lack of continuity of collection crews.  Please look out for your more vulnerable neighbours.  These bins can be very difficult to manoeuvre.

Philippa Bond ● 3688d

I have the little black rubbish wheelie (at last) - and t's not full - but the big blue recycling one is full to overflowing. There only has to be one missed and you are stuck for a month...

Sara Nathan ● 3689d

I have monitoring food recycling bins in our street since the end of May.  For 80 houses of which estimating 40% are flats, the number of food bins put out is still circa 28.

Libby Kemp ● 3689d

You may only have one black bag a fortnight. So do we. But lots of households, especially houses converted to two or more flats, have much more than that. The Council have a statutory obligation to collect household waste, not to leave stickers saying why they won't collect it. We all pay for this service and the council need to come up with solutions that work for the residents who pay their wages. Letting the borough turn into a rubbish tip is not the answer.

Peter Millman ● 3696d

This is what my neighbours are discovering, their black bags are piled up getting more disgusting by the say, the black Wheelie Bins are overflowing, so it looks like it will be a few more weeks before the black bags are collected.I think the streets will be over-run with vermin if this situation continues much longer!

Jean F Fernandez ● 3696d

To be honest I recycle nearly all my stuff so only have one black bag every two week's. Folk must still be throwing away a lot of things that can be recycled to accumulate such a mountain of black bags that will not fit into the large rubbish bins.

Tony Crumpton ● 3696d

So,people who had no room in their bin for black bags this week are expected to somehow find room in the same bin in two weeks, having accumulated another fortnights' worth of rubbish in the meantime. Genius move Ealing Council, well done.

Dot Lipniacki ● 3696d

Today the Amey contractors have put stickers on every black bag left beside a full bin saying "Unfortunately we were unable to collect your rubbish today because it was not placed inside the black wheelie bin. Do not report this as a missed collection...Place it it the black bin before the next collection". There is clearly no allowance for larger households that produce more than 240l of rubbish a fortnight. Pity they couldn't just collect the bags instead of wasting time and effort putting stickers on every bag in each pile.This is going from #binfarce to #bintragedy.  Looks like it's a matter of weeks before we are overwhelmed with street filth.As a household that produces only one small black bag of rubbish a fortnight, it's really  depressing to see Acton streets degenerate like this because of a badly thought out, inflexible and poorly implemented waste strategy that was imposed without proper consultation by the Labour Gauleiters at Ealing Council.

Peter Millman ● 3696d

I would agree that there are some other factors affecting the percentage.We still don't have the wheelie bins despite 2 online requests, the door-to-door visit and several phone calls and formal complaints. Apparently, we were deemed unsuitable for the wheelie - we are mid-terrace and our 10 terraced neighbours have the wheelie and the street is flat and front of houses effectively the same. Still don't know when the contractor may deliver and the council staff can only say there is a backlog. Wait another 2 weeks! No formal reply to the formal complaint.So, we have had some of the rubbish dispersed/removed by foxes, we've taken some sacks to the tip and our collection of bags grows.Creative accounting using damn statistics?

Grant McAllister ● 3697d

Angela,I had not considered that factor,well done,John.

Dr John Stolworthy D.Sc ● 3698d

Maybe the Council are referring to refuse being LITERALLY recycled .....from my street, into the next, on the wind, along with foxes and other vermin taking it into the next street and so on.  This is the only kind of recycling that has increased.  Recycling of debris, food, rubbish from street to street when it's not collected often enough by the Council.  So, technically, the Council aren't lying, uh?

Angela White ● 3698d

Jean,excuse the pun we need to kick up a stink!remember it took the great stink many years ago to  get our politiciansat the time to act.John.

Dr John Stolworthy D.Sc ● 3700d

John, All I can say is something has got to give! How much longer will Ealing Council turn a blind eye to the dirt and filth in our streets???

Jean F Fernandez ● 3700d

So Recycling is up 55%,THE STATE OF OUR UNTIDY DIRTY STREETSIS UP ALSO,OVER 100%,NEVER BEFORE HAS SO MUCH RUBBISH AND DIRT BEEN LEFT ON OUR STREETS!!!!!!!

Dr John Stolworthy D.Sc ● 3700d

There are also quite a lot of people who found that recycling boxes in particular food waste ones requested never turned up.The recycling rate always went up when there was door to door visiting and bins were ordered for people and information given and queries answered.  There's nothing that special about wheelie bins!Too much is now done only online and it is causing problems. The Council needs to stop bullying people to do everything online.  It is fine for a lot of people but not everyone - especially if they do not have, never have had, and never will have all the technology and expertise to deal with it - let alone those who no longer have an IT department to service their technology.  Some residents are old enough to remember streets without cars, houses without electricity and fridges and central heating etc. There are youngsters who do not seem to understand this at all.  They need to start to. I say this as someone who wrote to the Council to complain that they were very slow in putting information and forms online!

Philippa Bond ● 3700d

The ward surgery is where you can address issues directly to your councillors (your elected representatives at local authority level). The issues they deal with are everything governed by the local authority such as environmental health, licensing, waste collection, planning, social services and what's left of local authority housing provision. When you don't receive answers from the Council and their staff, councillors are a way of getting some pressure applied to those departments to get things addressed.The Acton Central, East Acton & South Acton ward surgeries all happen at Ealing Borough Labour Party Office, Ruskin Hall, 16 Church Road, W3 8PP. They occur every Saturday between 11am and midday.As for how effective approaching local councillors is in Ealing, I cannot tell you as this will be my first time doing so since moving to the borough. But it's doing something, because just waiting for the Council Dept. to respond seems to be largely ineffective.

Joseph Jones ● 3701d

Joseph what is Ward surgery and where is it? What can you raise?Is it effective?

Nathan Macrides ● 3701d

Just to echo your concerns with not receiving a reply from Ealing Council, I made an online request for wheelie bins to be delivered to our property (we currently share 2 sets of bins between four properties converted into a total of 14 flats). The request was made on the 5th July, still haven't received extra bins or had even a reply. I've also called twice in the intervening period and lodged requests for more bins, and yet again no bins have arrived in any one of the two collections made since the original online request was logged.Major farce regarding the implementation of this new system, a system that largely didn't need to be implemented in Acton (we had quite high levels of recycling box use before the change-over).Going to ward surgery on Saturday to start face-to-face discussion with Acton Central councillors to apply pressure on Mahfouz, Amey and Environmental Health to get our specific situation addressed. If no positive answer is given, it's time to start collecting the recycling that we cannot dispose of in the two bins we share with 13 other flats and dump it on the steps of Town Hall. Their mess, they can clean it up.

Joseph Jones ● 3701d

If the Councillors really believe that the recycling rate is 55% I am sorry to say they must be living on Cloud Cuckoo Land!  Perhaps they should get out and about to see what is happening in our filthy streets!

Jean F Fernandez ● 3702d

I thought I was good at maths,can someone please explain howrecycling has gone up since the dreaded wheelie bins have been brought into use?more lies and fairy tales.

Dr John Stolworthy D.Sc ● 3702d

In the last 6 weeks since the wheelie bins were introduced I have made 3 online complaints to the council about the lack of street sweeping and asked if there has been a change in policy. Needless to say, I have had no reply, despite the online promise to reply within 4 days. Prior to the wheelie bins, the policy was to sweep weekly, with a deep clean of gulleys etc. every 4 weeks. Now it seems to have ceased altogether.Wheelie bins do not deal with leaves and litter, and if you live near a park, as we do, leaves are an issue even in summer, let alone autumn.  I used to sweep and bag leaves on the pavement in front of our house and in our front garden, but now I would have to pay the council to take them away. So I don't bother. If Bassam Mahfouz or his colleagues are reading this, can you please make some sort of public statement on street cleaning policy since the introduction of wheelie bins?If street sweepers have been sacked, and service levels changed, this should be announced publicly.

Peter Millman ● 3702d

Maybe the fact that most of the roadsweepers have been sacked doesn't help

Dennis Brogan ● 3702d

Trying to spin positive headlines is so counter-productive when the story everyone is talking about is dirty pavements.It just makes it sound like the council isn't listening. #Pravda

Richard Grange ● 3702d