More cheese please Louise
A simple recycling initiative has been introduced at the historic market site of Whitechapel in London.
Tower Hamlets council have provided the bustling market with designated bins that take organic, cardboard and other packaging waste and they are emptied twice a day.
It is hoped this will reduce rubbish in the area by up to 88% and the results are good, following the initial trial period of 3 months.
The scheme will allow for 9 tonnes of organic waste and 9.5 tonnes of dry recycling to be diverted to recycling facilities each week, which is a tremendous achievement.
Local councillor, Abdal Ullah gave his blessing to the recycling plan and told the BBC, “Markets by their very nature can create a lot of waste, when you take into account things like packaging and food products with a relatively short shelf life. We have introduced a number of new ways that all this can be recycled and we are very excited that none of the market waste will be sent to landfill.”
This sounds a wonderful initiative and I’m hoping it will gather momentum and be a resounding success.
One of my friends was at Brighton beach the other week and was horrified by the amount of litter left on it. People would just get up after their picnic and leave everything where it was.
early morning, people (the council one presumes) came along and cleaned the beach, every day - it all went into black bags (and my friend assumes was landfilled).
Now, wouldn’t it make sense to spend some money on funky recycling bins every 100 yds along the beach or something? In Brighton you could get away with some outrageous arty bins to encourage people.
Ah well, let’s hope Whitechapel learns valuable lessons to pass onto the rest of the UK
Mrs G x
Morning Mrs Green,
Dreadful news about Brighton, which surprises me really! It’s such a funky and beautiful place, you’d think the visitors would be more respectful and want to keep it looking lovely.
The ’sexy bin’ idea seems like a very simple solution to the problem, but the people visiting the beach ‘need’ to take personal responsibility for the mess they are creating, regardless of the availability of bins to deposit their waste.
If there’s nowhere to leave your trash, bag it all, take it home and recycle it there!
But I do think high-vis, easily accessible options for depositing recyclable rubbish is a progressive and very effective idea.
I’m sure the problems you’ve highlighted on Brighton Beach occur in lots of theme park type places too.
Where there’s a food court and a picnic area, there’s often an array of bins splurging out with all sorts of ‘contaminated’ rubbish, which I reckon you’re right, it goes straight on the next bus to landfill.
I’m basing this on comments from friends, as I haven’t been to many of these venues myself, but there is one little place that ‘has’ impressed me, Crealy Adventure Park in Exeter.
I interviewed Angela Wright, the director and founder of the park and sustainability and environmental issues are very important to her. It’s also one of a handful of websites that has their eco-policies and protocols up for all to see.
In the food and picnic areas, they’ve introduced funky recycling bins for different things and on the whole, the punters sort them accordingly - everybody wins!
Actually, I think I’ll give them a ring and see what else I can find out - watch out for a Rubbish Posting soon…
TSx
Hi Tracey,
A wee note of support for this blog and all you are doing! I am bookmarking this blog too - will be linking to you from my blog and generally trying to help things along.
Best wishes from Scotland.
~ Malcolm
Hi Malcolm - thank you very much for your note of support and for helping to spread the good, green word up in beautiful Scotland!
Kind regards from the chilly south,
TS