Hooray! We can now put all those annoying bits of plastic packaging in our Islington recycling boxes.
Plastic drinks bottles joined the mix a while ago, but now we can add yoghurt and margarine tubs, sandwich containers, even plastic bags. Also juice cartons and other tetrapaks.
So we can now recycle plastics, glass, paper, cardboard and cans. And compost our food and garden waste.
I’m beginning to wonder what will be left in our black bag?
I do love a bit of vintage fashion, whether it’s in Camden Passage or online at sites like Couture Allure. It’s the chicest kind of recycling.
This weekend there’s a new vintage fashion event (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) up at Archway. It’s taking place at The Byam Shaw School of Art in Elthorne Road, from 11am-5pm on Sunday. Entrance is just £3.
This week is Recycle Week, on the credit-crunchy theme of Let’s Waste Less.
Islington Council has more information online. There are lots of recycling schemes out there, but getting the information to people is crucial.
While were sheltering from the storm in the pub on Monday I had a good chat with the licensee. She has piles of bottles to recycle, and was regretting the limited opportunities for glass recycling from the main trade waste contractors. It doesn’t help that the inevitable government targets for councils are all about domestic recycling, plus business rates go off to the Treasury and don’t cover local trade waste services. Even small firms have to find and fund their own recycling. One option is to use a specialist contractor such as Paper Round.
Meanwhile in the Angel Business Improvement District, there’s a new scheme to collect paper for recycling, starting with firms based in St John Street, Pentonville Road, Penton Street and White Lion Street.
I was going to post something about changes to the rubbish collections over the Easter holidays. But there aren’t any!
The Islington Council website reports “Recycling and refuse collections continue as normal over the Easter weekend.”
Our recycling and black bags weren’t picked up on Friday, because of the snow.
But according to the Council website, they should be collected later today. The advice is that the recycling and refuse collections are running two days in arrears, with both refuse and recycling crews working over the weekend: all scheduled collections will be completed this week.
They also warn that further disruptions may occur next week if the snowfall on Monday is heavy.
Meanwhile once things are back to normal, there are two new recycling services coming from the council.
All Islington libraries now have facilities to recycle batteries up to 9v. Neat: two of my interests are recycling and libraries, and now I’ll be able to combine them!
And the food waste collection is being extended to restaurants.
It’s frustrating that Government targets for local councils are all about recycling domestic waste, when businesses produce lots of recyclable rubbish too. So I hope the trial of the scheme is a success and more food businesses take part.
Islington’s holiday refuse collection and recycling dates are available online.
The Council website also has details of how to get your Christmas tree recycled.
Friday is our combined waste and recycling collection day.
Slightly disconcertingly I came home to find my green box had not only been emptied but had vanished completely. But there were two green boxes abandoned on the other side of the road, next to the park, so I’ve rehomed one of those. Very odd. Some people paint their house number on the box: never had to do that before, but maybe it’s time.
On a plus point, on the way home I’d spotted a pile of hefker – bits of wood, old bedding, spilling out of bags – on a street corner. On a Friday night that’s a nightmare, likely to get kicked and blown about the place all weekend. So I phoned the Council’s Contact Islington service – and by the next time I went past yesterday, it had gone. Good work.
And more praise for the Council’s cleanup services – this time on graffiti – here.
I popped out in a rainy lunch hour today for a pleasant lunch with Alexis Rowell.
Alexis is a LibDem councillor over in Camden, where he chairs the Council’s Sustainability Task Force. So as two environmentally-friendly folk, we met at the Duke of Cambridge, Islington’s award-winning organic pub. (Two lots of swede-topped fish pie, a lot nicer than it sounds).
Roll back fifteen years, and Alexis & I were neighbours in Highbury; we reminisced about the bad old days when Islington had a Labour council, our rubbish was collected every three weeks, and the borough recycling service consisted of about 6 bottle banks!
It’s changed enormously since then: Islington residents now have weekly recycling collections for glass, paper, cans, cardboard and plastic bottles, plus the brown bucket service for food waste. Even our garden waste gets taken away for composting (although it’s actually greener to compost it in the garden if you can).
And that’s part of the challenge. Recycling has moved from a minority pursuit to a mainstream universal service – operated on an industrial scale, to meet ever increasing government targets. That’s great for diverting waste from landfill; but the scale of the operations and the distances involved, don’t always feel very green. It’s certainly a far cry from people and communities taking responsibility for their own waste, close to home.
Alexis is a critic of the co-mingled recycling scheme that’s now the norm across London boroughs (of all political complexions), including both Camden and Islington. That’s the system where you put all your paper, cans etc in together, and they get sorted at the other end. I’ve seen how it’s made recycling easier for Islington residents and how the amount of material diverted from landfill or incineration has soared as a result. But I also think we need to start thinking now about the 3rd generation of recycling schemes.
My thinking? It will be much more focused on carbon neutrality. Combined with rising fuel prices, the ‘material miles’ will be a much bigger factor in our recycling choices. There will be more personalised packages of recycling services, reflecting people’s different lifestyles. More recycling will be integrated into shopping – as with the way your old washing machine now gets taken away when you buy a new one. More charities will offer niche recycling schemes – like recycling mobile phones for Refuge. And there will be more sophisticated individual incentives for recycling: carrots for citizens rather than sticks for councils.
Changing the way central government treats councils is key to this. Labour talk about localism and innovation and personalised services – but their central control-freak targets have the opposite effect.
The other thing that needs to change is petty party politicking about recycling. To change recycling services needs long term planning investment. If opposition parties (of whatever variety) pick holes in the service for the sake of it, it undermines the effort we all need to make to continue to improve recycling.
Investment advice forwarded by a friend today:
If you had purchased £1,000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95.
With HBOS, earlier last week your £1,000 would have been worth £16.50.
£1,000 invested in XL Leisure would now be worth less than £5.
But if you bought £1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to an aluminium re-cycling plant, you would get £214.
So based on the above statistics the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and re-cycle.
No, not weight (or waist) watching, but waste.
Islington residents are recycling more than ever before: since 2004, the amount we send to landfill has halved. But can anyone get their unrecycled, ‘black bag’ waste down to zero?
Between 4 and 12 October, north London boroughs (including Islington) will be running ‘Watch Your Waste’ week; it’s the first of its kind in London. The Watch Your Waste Challenge is an opportunity for residents to see how little rubbish they can produce for a week.
Participants will count or weigh their normal rubbish in the week beforehand; then during the week, aim for zero waste by only using things that can be reused, recycled or composted, so little or nothing for the black bag.
If you live in Islington and are interested in taking part, or just want to find out more, contact Michael Benn at Islington Council (tel: 020 7527 2627, michael.benn@ islington. gov.uk).
