Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Why is Crouch End high street so much cleaner than Green Lanes?
I recently noted that people queue for buses in Crouch End but not Green Lanes and wondered why.
On my most recent excursion I noticed how markedly cleaner Crouch End is on a Saturday morning compared to Green Lanes and again wondered why?
Both are very busy on a Saturday morning (Crouch End arguably more so). Both have lots of cafes and restaurants. Both have bus stops.
But Green Lanes is littered with rubbish.
Why is it so?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mark Williams
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I would argue that bags of rubbish left on the street do make an area feel dirty. Even when everything works exactly as intended, most people would rather not step over bags of waste on the pavement.
In practice, things often do not work as intended. Collections are missed, time windows are ignored, bags get torn, and a single non-compliant household or business can affect everyone. There is no real capacity control, extra items are added to the piles, vermin get into bags, and people in difficult circumstances are scavenging.
I think bagged collections must persist not because they are a good solution, but because they are the least bad option in the absence of significant capital investment. Other European cities with similar space constraints have much better solutions.
The streetscape with everything working as intended:I agree, Fix My Street is great. I often go running around the neighbourhood, and if I can be bothered, I will report problems I see using that app on my runs. I've always been pleasantly surprised at how quickly my reports are acted on. Last week I reported two issues on my street, and both were fixed the very next day.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton
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Mark, sorry for the delay replying to you, but I was unsure of the map borders. I can no longer find my old maps, so I'm doing my best with Google Streetview. My eyes are unreliable but I think your photo of the bus shelter next to bagged-waste-waiting-for-collection is on the Hackney side of the road. The street behind it, Rowley Gardens, is shown by Google as in Hackney.
Of course a bunch of bags shouldn't be sitting on the pavement. But does it look dirty?
I would have said it looks like lugging work about to happen. We're not terribly pristine animals are we?
I don't know if you ever came across a Hungarian named George Mikes. (Pronounced Meekesh.) He had trouble getting rid of a sticky sweet wrapper in Switzerland and dropped it out of a tram. He claimed to be presented with the wrapper, washed and ironed, sealed in a cellophane bag, as he left the Swiss plane.
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Mark, if some sealed bags on the pavement make it feel dirty to you, we can pretend that the world is ultra clean and as sparkling shiny as a surgeons knife.
But it isn't.Years ago we went to an exhibition in the Welcome Collection, Euston Road. The show and the book it was paired with was called "Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life." It was also described "As our very last taboo."
We ignored the taboo and paid with our own money. Old fashioned paper notes. Remember those? Which loads of other people had already touched. They gave us change in coins. Bits of metal with fingerprints all over them, would you believe it? Dunno how we made it home. What with breathing the air pollution along Euston Road and then sitting with tube crowds while partaking lung air on the tube home.
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Permalink Reply by Liz
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The issue is not leaving rubbish out, it is the speed with which it is removed. In hot countries, they don't have the luxury of leaving it for a day or two because the smell would be horrendous. Rubbish is cleared daily, sometimes twice a day. People put their rubbish in big dumpsters, or, in Spain, I've seen underground receptacles. They don't have personal bins.
Yet, in this country, similar solutions attract problems of dumping and fly tipping. Possibly because the bins aren't emptied as regularly. Possibly because these countries attract a lot of tourists and there are incentives for keeping the place clean and tidy. Maybe its the London psyche - it's always struggled with dirt and waste - compared to beautiful Edinburgh and Cardiff, London is mucky. As you know, I've contemplated these issues for years, I'm not any nearer an explanation.
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Litter, Dumping, rubbish
Tipping all around
Garbage, spit, offensive muck
Defecation on the groundIn Posher parts the folks like us
Prefer this Latin name
And banish short blunt Saxon words
As Queen Victoria's reign.
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Many years ago I signed up to the Community Volunteer programme (some of you will have been here long enough to know I used to do a little blog on here about my adventures). We met frequently and spoke to staff from enforcement and cleaning. One comment that stuck with me from a street sweeper was that the people in the west (specifically Muswell Hill) reported EVERYTHING - "If there's so much as a discarded cigarette packet on the street, they phone us up"
As Community Volunteers, we were asked to report anything that needed cleaning, repairing or removing on a daily basis. We had a few benefits like trips to the recycling centre (woo hoo), a free tea towel (even better!), notebooks and pencils but mainly it was about having pride in the square metre outside our house and keeping it clean and cared for. There were volunteers from across the borough.
Budget cuts, and a change of emphasis towards crime which the volunteers opposed, meant that the scheme was eventually wound up. As far as I know it was never reinstated.
I often wrote on my blog about the reasons for increased littering, the various campaigns of the past, the frankly weird opinions about littering (keeps street sweepers in word apparently) and fly tipping ("they just drive around and pick up what they see, don't they?" - Er, no) and what Alan dubbed "the third system" which was the use of the streets to get rid of unwanted goods for free rather than pay - HMO landlords who don't want to pay for removing mattresses and furniture will leave it out, those without cars who can't drive to the dump. Over the years, interest wavered in our local representatives from very active to positively supine in the face of this problem (often the good ones got promoted and then things reverted).
We talked about getting local estate agents involved with helping people understand how to get rid of bags of rubbish (having lived abroad I recall one of the most perplexing things as a newcomer was understanding how the bins work because everyone seems to think that you somehow just know). We talked about getting traders to be more proactive.
We acknowledged that overcrowding in houses meant a lot of rubbish is generated, and that illegal dwellings often don't have facilities at all so rubbish is dumped by rubbish bins (at least the "good' ones put it by the bins).
Sometimes, rubbish is removed from people's bins so that bin foragers can go through it ("You'd be amazed what people throw away" said one forager who told me that he often got enough stuff to do a car boot sale. Yes I stood with him until he cleared up).
We speculated that an ethnological study of the reasons why people fly tip and dump would be fascinating: misinformation, misconceptions and sometimes just plain selfishness ("Why should I"?)
However, much as its satisfying to blame others and absolve ourselves because we don't personally do these things, I still think it has to start at our own front doors. When was the last time you reported a mess on the street? Requested a street clean? Made a complaint to your councillor? Yes, it can be demoralising when you do this and the problem keeps happening but in a time of budget cuts and priorities, if you make no noise, the assumption will be either that there is no problem or that people will live with it and the squeakier wheels will get the attention.
Download the Love Clean Streets app and get reporting. Even though I no longer write about these things online, I report things nearly every day and they do get cleaned up pretty quickly. Speculation is fun, but action is better.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter
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Thanks Liz.
Lack of involvement (and the need for more) is significant.
I served on the Planning Committee for four years. At one meeting, one of the Eastern Bloc Councillors expressed to me surprise that a particular (huge) Planning Application in the East had attracted not a single Objection. The Councillor suggested that that was typical for Tottenham. Developers and Planning staff pretty much know the envelope can be pushed further in the East.
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