Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
New waste collection arrangements: where we're at now
With the enforced retirement of the Community Volunteers from active duty, thank wheelies that Sustainable Haringey have stepped into the breach to open dialogue with Haringey Council over waste management and recycling.
Representatives from Haringey and Veolia met with seven members of Sustainable Haringey to examine how the changes to waste collection are going and what had been learned from the changeovers in Phase 1 and 2. The third phase covering the rest of Haringey will be rolled out in October.
First of all Michael McNicholas, Neighbourhood Action Team Manager, explained how the change had been publicised (letter and leaflet to all households, booklet delivered with bins, attending area forums and RA meetings). Extra council staff were taken on to deal with complaints and a HMO (houses in multiple occupation) action plan was developed.
He then went on to outline some measures of performance and lessons learned. These are listed below, taken from the official and agreed minutes of the meeting.
a) Impact on recycling – in phase1 and 2 areas 40% increase in dry recyclables; increase in green and food waste. On course to meet recycling target of 31.7% (ASK)
b) Missed collections – rise in March (with introduction of Phase 1). Various measures introduced to minimise this problem.
c) Call centre performance. Veolia received 10,000 calls per month in March (twice previous rate); this declined to 8000 in May before another rise. Problems dealing with all these calls so Veolia has increased staff, some staff work weekends to deal with emails and changes have been made to computer systems.
d) Container requests and delivery. Around time of Phase 1 great increase in requests for hessian garden waste sacks, kitchen caddies and outside food containers. He estimated that there have been requests for between 500-600 120 litre wheelie bins. Veolia have appointed dedicated container manager to ensure correct deliveries of containers, etc. Residents can now collect kitchen caddies and outdoor food waste bins from the Re-use and Recycling Centres in Hornsey and Tottenham.
e) HMO action plan – door knocking, letter to all registered landlords and letting agents, close collaboration with Housing Improvement Team, exploring powers to enforce HMOs through landlords.
f) “Side waste” and overflowing bins– Veolia visits, engages with and monitors these households. He gave examples. They have cards showing what goes in each container if people don’t speak English (and some staff with other languages).
Sustainable Haringey then raised some issues following the presentation, some of which will be familiar to HOL members:
a) Whether all households had been audited before the changes introduced (told this had taken place in late 2011 for all three phases).
b) The unsightliness of the wheelie bins especially in conservation areas. We saw photos of Noel Park – Michael agreed to do a street visit with the residents association. The option of smaller wheelie bins or shared larger one was discussed.
c) Why glass and other recyclables are not collected separately.We were told that one bidder for the service did offer this but it would have increased carbon footprint because of increased collection vehicles, etc.
d) Are people putting waste in the recycling wheelie bin?Has the percentage of waste in the dry recyclables sent to the Materials Recovery Facility (Murf) gone up because of this? We were told that council receives regular reports from Murf (these reports also go to DEFRA). The Murf refuses to accept loads if they are contaminated. Michael said that there had been no reports of contaminated loads from the Murf.
e) Sustainable Haringey representatives asked about commercial waste and it was agreed to have a separate meeting about this.
The final 15,000 households are in Phase 3 due to start late October. A key point to note is that Veolia will need to reschedule all rounds across the borough and this will result in changing the day of collection for most residents. Households will receive a new collection calendar. The design of the sticker on the recycling wheelie bin is to be improved (the writing fades on present stickers).
So, there's good here. Clearly, the news that recycling is going up is great and also that contamination is low. Veolia do appear to be responding to problems with extra staff and are listening to residents observations re bin design for example.
However, despite the action plan re HMOs, we don't have figures yet on whether this plan is working and what targets have been set re the success of the plan. On my pet hate (I must admit), the sheer unsightliness of the bins, there is some movement but I'm guessing places like Harringay without conservation status will be back of the queue when solutions are being discussed. Please feel free to add other comments and observation below based on what you have read here.
With thanks to Joyce Rosser, Convenor of Sustainable Haringey Waste Group for these minutes. Joyce says look out for another compost giveaway in Alexandra Park in October or early November. Shovels at the ready!
Tags for Forum Posts: bins, new recycling bins, recycling, veolia, veolia missed collections, waste collection
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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But aren't there European Elections due about Thurs 5th June 2014? Shouldn't all of us, from the Miltons of Highgate to the Hamptons of Harringay and beyond, really get behind Cllr Canver now for one of the eight London seats? We owe her this much at least. The Euro Project needs completing with the inclusion of Asia Minor, so every vote counts in Strasbourg and Brussels.
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Permalink Reply by Ruth on
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As a single person living alone who is almost anal about recycling, I feel I must question this survey! I can believe that women in couples do the majority of the recycling but we single women are way up there with it as well, I'm sure. I even pick up stuff off the street to put in my bin...
Re-education plus some very polite threats to households who make a mess of it all are needed. It's not rocket science- we all have responsibilities as well as rights.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Sorry, Ruth, I've lost the thread. Which survey do you mean? In fact I've lost track of the various discussion threads on this topic.
I've been trying to think of ways that councillors plus residents, could be more effective in both monitoring, understanding and improving the way the waste/recycling service is (un)delivered.
The question of fines/threats is an interesting one. A friend of ours who was born in London grew up in Geneva. When her parents first moved there her mother hung washing on the balcony of their flat. The police arrived - called by the neighbours. Apparently it was illegal.
Liz Ixer introduced me to the work of the anthropologist Setha Low. One of the things she talks about in this video is the way that in gated communities people don't want to deal with one another. They delegate power to a management board.
My observation is that in any setting there's a danger that we surrender power to a "higher" authority which can and often does become unaccountable; and sometimes arbitrary. (For example, it could be the police; or parking wardens; or a big woman/man councillor.)
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the survey mentioned here about couples/single people and recycling habits which Hugh rightly points out didnt include gay couples!
The higher power could be the local community not faceless bureaucrats. But sometimes, in extreme cases as we see here and on our own streets, some people need a bit of a threat to do what really is best for everyone, their neighbours included. I'd rather emphasise the education element of course but we all have some beligerant neighbours who really seem to enjoy tipping their rubbish out all over the place and leaving a mess and they don't give a t*ss.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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"Results showed that single people living alone are less likely to recycle – only 65% did so, compared with 79% of mixed-sex couples."
We're left to wonder at what gay couples do then. Is their recycling record so awful that The Guardian daren't mention it!
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Permalink Reply by HoL Site Admin on
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Not by Site Admin, may we add!
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Alan, bemoaning that fact that the community doesn't take it upon itself to police itself is a valid social point, but it won't get our streets clean or our bins emptied. It's like the punchline to the old joke "if I wanted to get there I wouldn't start from here"
Ultimately whether the "community" does something boils down to whether individual men and women do or do not do. If you want individuals to stand up and be the small authority, they need to feel they do not stand alone.
Yes, ideally the big authority behind them would be the mass of the community but today we don't have that, and arguably given the level of transience plus our very varied social mix here we never will be the single, homogeneous community that that implies. In the balance I think that is a good thing since history shows that single, homogeneous communities also enforce norms for less benign matters than waste disposal.
Starting from where we are and not where we'd like to be, we need an external authority to provide that backup.
How about a social pact with the council - you won't act on a complaint unless the complainee has approached the person causing the problem and asked them to stop (via an intermediary if necessary). In return, if someone has to ask the council to step in they do so immediately and with the power to both resolve the immediate problem, apply sanctions/assistance as appropriate to stop it happening again, and most importantly to protect the complainee against any retribution.
The other part that the council needs to play is in maintaining the expected standards we want people to live up to. It's much easier to drop another piece of litter than the first piece and it's much easier to add something to an existing fly tip than dump it on a pristine street. We need the council to respond proactively to rubbish problems as the current mess gives no one any reason to realise more is expected from them. Yes, it should be the community not the council that does this, but if that was happening the problem would have gone away so again we need the council to provide the nudge. It also means the considerate majority get the environment that they deserve rather than suffering the one created by the selfish/ignorant minority.
Also, making it easier for a population with little money and without cars to get stuff taken to the tip would help too. I dont think it's a coincidence that the type of rubbish most often fly tipped matches pretty closely with the list of items the council bulky items service will not collect.
Having said all this, I have seen one grassroots action that worked very well. When I lived in Finsbury Park the front yards were generally used as skips to gather bulky rubbish until it was worth getting one of the council's limited free bulky collections. One year there was a spate of arson attacks on these rubbish heaps. That stopped the use of front yards as skips!
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