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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Green Lanes does not have to look like this. The so-called re-development hasn't even finished & it's already filthy. Why?

Why isn't Veoila down to do this at least weekly?; (from this post)

So Dearest councillors can you pretty please find out for us what is going to be done to rectify this quite unnecessary situation ... and let us all know here? Ta

Green Lanes - Live well for now!

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At the Passage Karen, right outside the entrance for the Infants...

Let me no the times they are supposed to be collected and I can let you know if any are missed. I imagine Veolia have certain performance targets that they need to adhere to, etc.

Thanks

[I'm reposting this further down the thread. Sorry, Seema, I replied to your earlier comment and not the more relevant one just above.]

As we see, another example of Seema's practical real world campaigning.  Insisting on action to clean up Vicarage Parade, West Green Road.

Not to take any credit away from the effort put-in and the partially successful outcome, I think it's a good example of how tackling an almost continuous "stream" of rubbish dumped on the pavement can't be solved by simply speeding up routine clearance.

Counter-intuitively this may even have a perverse effect - by increasing the volume nd frequency of waste dumped at a location. How?  What seems to happen is that some people take advantage of the extra "service" offered. They may include: traders: residents in flats above shops: and a few people from further away who can't be bothered to use their wheelie bins. But carry a bag of garbage across the road or round the corner.

Dealing with the "stream" requires "upstream" thinking. Sometimes called 'The Prevention Parable'.  Do our council election candidates grasp this?  If not, do they know how to use Google to look up some useful links without help?  (By yourselves, please.  NO CHEATING.)  If yes, can candidates demonstrate any ability to understand what they read?

(Tottenham Hale ward councillor. Last fine careless rapture)

LOL! I was like confused...! I thought maybe I was dreaming about you again Mr S| ;) 

My Reply:

To be fair Cllr S, this is one of the problems I had with the council (as you are aware), they spent 5 months searching for which category of public to blame (resident or trader) despite me making it clear that my assessment and evidence pointed in the main at neither. 

  1. Residents (and some traders) along that parade are asked by the council to leave their rubbish on the pavement of Vicarage Parade. Therefore this is not "dumping" in the illegal sense of the word. 
  2. What the problem was, was Veiola were simply not coming at the times they said they were to collect. 
  3. To even get the officers to contemplate that Vieola were at fault was practically impossible. I had better luck convincing them that the moon was made of cheese! I had photographic evidence, some of showed that it was not collected over a few days - but it was like "We will leaflet the traders and residents to warn them of their behaviour!" 
  4. As you are aware, after the intervention of Nick Walkley, who instantly saw from the evidence where the problem was and got his Director onto it. 

Yes, now this "spot" is known as a place to leave your rubbish will attract others to use it as a place to dump. But that is a problem wider than Vieola not collecting, the residents and traders are told to leave their rubbish there. All I have solved is it will only be on the street for an hour max twice a day rather than 3-5hrs on average. 

There are no wheelie bins, the only shop who I see has one is the 24hr green grocers, that is one out of a parade of 15! 

As I said below, I have no alternative solution (yet), but the current "system" means I am expected to cross the road to avoid piles of bin bags every evening on my way home if I come back in that hour window (which is prime time 7-8pm). 

If anyone has ideas, please share so we can present them as a solution.

Had one reply from a councillor so far;

Thank you for your email.  I have seen the discussion on HoL.  I agree that the current situation is not working.  I have made my views clear and the need to find a better way to deal with this and continue to work on this issue.

Regards

Karen
Karen Alexander
Liberal Democrat Councillor for Harringay Ward
karen.alexander2@haringey.gov.uk
020 8348 3892 / 07875 490055

Others are of course welcome to email/contact the other 6 councillors to try and bring them on board to find a solution. Appreciate your experiences Seema but do think this is what councillors are elected to work on with council officers & contractors such as Veolia. Bringing the Chief Executive on board is a good idea. I'm sure the councillors are capable of doing this.

Maintenance must be costed into a re-development, otherwise it's pointless carrying out such a scheme. Looking after our high st or Grande Parade is about taking pride in our area. If it can't even be kept clean then very little else will follow.

This discussion over on another thread;

Reply by Rob Tao on March 26, 2014 at 12:33

There is talk about cleaning all paving at the end of construction, but not yet confirmed.

The wheelie bins were removed off GL 10yrs ago replaced by 'timed collection', twice daily. Bags from traders and residents above shops have allocated times to put their rubbish out for collection. The wheelie bins in the past was terrible and unsightly on GL. The last remaining ones has now been removed outside the Salisbury.

Rob, will there be a final check of the works once completed and any cracked and poorly laid paving rectified? The paving along the stretch outside Yasar Halim is uneven and the kerb stones weren't relaid, which results in the gutter being much the same level as the pavement. This issue was addressed elsewhere so I'm not sure why nothing was done here. Good work otherwise.

Nick, the snagging will be done at the end on construction. So it will be on their time (RJ) to rectify. Still to come are street furniture (bike stands, seating), trees, planter and a clock on the corner of St Anns.

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Yes, I remember the large paladin bins. Right decision to get rid of those. But dumping bags onto the pavement, esp when they burst open with oil & other liquids spilling over the now 'new' pavement is not the best solution. How about something like this placed every so often for trade waste?;

Admittedly a more bespoke solution but there aren't many ideas out there it appears, other than bags or wheelie/paladin bins. I reckon our more successful GL businesses such as the double fronted Turkish establishments could sponsor make & install of a bespoke design for GLs. Take some effort from the GLSG though.

London is crammed full of design houses that could deal with this brief. Maybe someone at WRAP could help get this off the ground or point in the right direction.

I like them Matt, would they not look great outside each restaurant ?... They could act as beacons for good food 

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Well, the business paying for such a bin wouldn't have exclusive business use for waste but, would have the exclusive advertising rights on the end panel. And crucially collections would still be twice a day!

I do like the look of the bins, on the occasional corners maybe replacing some of the litter bins, but with 220 shops on the high st, it will be a sea of bins! With timed collection, once Veolia has been, there are no sign of bins to clutter the pavement.

And most of the big restaurants/traders have their own bin contract where they house a number of bins in the rear.

Note: Most of the black bags on GL are residential, traders bags are purple.

Purple bags !!! Thanks for this info Rob : they are all over the place and bursted !

also Veolia's road sweepers use purple bags too.

Delete
  • 2 bags of rubbish per business per day x 220 businesses = 440 bags

That could be doable. Businesses would have to go with Veolia though, no private waste contracts. 

Here is an example from Copenhagen that utlilises audience participation.

http://design-milk.com/a-giant-vipp-bin-to-keep-copenhagen-green/?u...(Design+Milk)

Too much?

So, FPR, the people who drive the Veolia waste trucks get the sack. For them, no more salaries, trade union negotiated job conditions, and pensions.  Instead, we'll rely on part-time piece-rate, zero hours scavengers to collect the waste off our streets. And somehow ferry it - at their own expense - to a "dump" where they're paid cash-in-hand.

Though maybe I haven't fully understand your proposal. And it's more like what is called Pay-as-You-Throw used in Belgium and other countries to persuade people to recycle more? According to the article Belgium takes out the trash, using both financial incentives and public education can be quite effective.

I don't know where you are in your own career, FPR, but these days I sometimes suggest that younger people starting out - or anyone looking for a career change - could do a lot worse than consider waste management.

In 2011 Zena and I went to a fascinating exhibition at the Welcome Collection called "Dirt, the Filthy Reality of Everyday Life".  I was very disappointed that they didn't find some way of having a lot more of it as continuing virtual online exhibition.  But if you're interested in the topic there are three videos  from the exhibition still available online.  The independent published a gallery of photos.

The book of the exhibition included a graphic novel by Brian Ralph called Club Crud.  (I haven't been able to locate it online.) In it he drew what he tells us were his formative years of total creativity, living in an "amazingly filthy" former warehouse in Providence Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, a small word of caution about the pitfalls of a completely private sector solution. A resident who lives not far from the Park View Road "dump" in Tottenham gave two blokes £15 between them to take some rubbish away. They shifted it here.

(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)

Why not freelance and subcontract the whole operation?

You might enjoy reading Henry Mayhew's "London Labour and the London Poor", (volume 2.) He described five categories of waste management freelance staff. 

Street buyers: buyers of various categories bought any repairable items, old clothes, furniture, waste paper, bottles and glass, metals, rags, hare and rabbit skins, dripping, grease, bones and tea leaves.

Street Finders: Included bone grubbers & rag gatherers as well as more specialised finders, who focused on e.g. dog-dung, cigar-ends and old wood.
Sewer and River Finders: Included dredger-men, mud-larks and sewer-hunters (toshers). The mud-larks - usually children - scavenged along the Thames beaches at low tide.
Paid Labourers: Dust-men were hired by dust contractors, who had sub-contactors for street sweeping. 'Night-men' removed "night-soil" (human shit ) to be sold as fertiliser.
Recycling Shops such as 'rag-and-bottle' which bought from the public or from the different 'finders.'

Can I also suggest, FPR that before the new firm of FP Rangers buys a flatbed truck, registers as a waste carrier, gets insured, registers for tax, and everything else needed; and well before you all set off proudly in your brand-new high-viz jackets, that a little Genchi Genbutsu is called for.

Get in touch with Veolia and ask if you can spend a day with the staff who drive round on one of the trucks picking up dumped bags.

Or perhaps contact the Chartered Institute of Waste Management. At least some of their members somewhere must be running this sort of system.  So they would know the cons and pros.

Ah, the fresh air of freedom. Everyone will without fail always follow the basic health and safety rules when they come across discarded syringes and other "clinical sharps"; or asbestos; and other dangerous & toxic substances.

I look forward to seeing your flatbed truck with you and your business partners running the pilot scheme. But can this please be near your house, not mine.

(Click on the photo of the tosher sieving sewage to enlarge.  Smithsonian source here.)

The Belgian scheme is not that great. It's not an incentive based scheme, it's effectively an extra tax on well behaved citizens.  Jerks will just fly tip instead.

At 2 euro for a 60L bag, you're easily looking at close to 10 euro/ month just for bin bags if you have a family. Sure, you can recycle and use cheaper bags, but do you really want to stretch that single expensive bin bag to last you a month? Gets pretty nasty. It's just a 2 euro/week tax.

Of course, enterprising city councillors then start ratcheting up the cost of the bin bags over time. 

It has even led to gangs counterfittings bin bags and selling them through cornershops on the sly.

It would be more effective to address the problem upstream in the supply chain and force manufacturers and retails to reduce packaging (hello, Amazon).

Was in the very attractive Edinburgh urban village of Stockbridge at the weekend. Flats served by large 110L bins which sit in road every 3 car parking spaces. Bins picked up by side mounted jib on bin lorry. Why can't this happen in ladder streets? Does LBH policy ultimately prefer wheelie bins even when HMOs are on rise? 

True...elsewhere did see mattresses invading thestreet.

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