Friday 12 October 2007

Greenwich Council and the Environment

Yesterday my nearly-mother-in-law brought home Greenwich Time Magazine. The reason for this was that there was a large wrap-around feature from the Council regarding new recycling/waste collection facilities. Yep. They've been at it again... the last that I heard about their 'schemes' were various rumours about new 'red top' bins (for garden waste and so forth) and the idea that rubbish would only be collected fortnightly (as it is in a lot of other parts of the country). It was quite surprising to therefore read about their new "Green/Blue/Black" intitiative.

What I totally (and always) admire about the Council is the great lengths they go to carrying out comsulation on these really important issues that are going to affect all our lives. Wait a minute. I don't think that they did. Certainly not in this house. Read the summary and see how you would like to try and sort your rubbish like this - bearing in mind that I am coming at it from the point of view of generally supporting anything which reduces pointless rubbish to landfill exercises.

Collections will generally be made weekly from two different wheelie bins. The blue top bin will be for recyclable rubbish (as per the Council's guidelines). This is an increase from the current fortnightly collection... all well and good. The green top bin will be for food and garden waste... also weekly - with me so far? Sounds good? No! This must not be put into plastic bags. So. Food scraps etc. etc. have to be collected in a caddy in your kitchen and emptied into the wheelie bin (probably after every meal). There they will sit and rot with nothing to protect them until they are collected. GRIM! So. What is the good of my lovely kitchen bin now? I guess it will be for the recycling. I guess the recycling bin will move to somewhere else in the house and be replaced by the caddy (which the council will provide). Will they provide a decent caddy with a carbon filter to prevent smells? Probably not. It will probably just be a cheap plastic pot. The final part of this is 'black'. There is no bin for black. The bags will be collected fortnightly for all remaining rubbish. Great. No food so I'm sure that the clever, clever foxes won't bother to split the bags open to investigate? No... they'll just leave them sitting on the kerb, I'm sure.

We shall see in 2008 how this pans out... but I'm yet to be convinced.