Monday 4 September 2017

The two faces of recycling in Derby UK

The recycling rate for Derby UK in recent years has been pretty dire! since the removal of the free garden and food waste recycling scheme and its replacement with just a simple paid for garden waste scheme the recycling rate went into freefall! pushed on yet further by removal of recycling services completely in some areas of the city due to claims of bin contamination.
When the council caught on to the fact that residents were monitoring the recycling rate via council cabinet documents they promptly removed the data from the council cabinet score cards!
The council is to some degree pegging its hopes on a claimed 7-8% recycling rate at the controversial Sinfin, Derby incineration plant where rigid plastics and metals are to be extracted for recycling before the rest is burnt - but until that site is up and running that material is out of reach.
 
With Recycle Week on the way Derby City Council on social media are putting on a recycling face such as here on Facebook!
 
 
In a similar vein on Twitter they are also putting forward a green front
 
 
With Zero Waste week here the council is also promoting that on Twitter
 
 
Has the council had a road to Damascus change of heart regarding recycling or is it just a cynical ploy to make it look like recycling matters to them?
 
But what are the realities for some residents living in the city?
The council drive to recycle isn't always all it is cracked up to be!
Vast areas of the city had their blue bin recycling scheme removed when the council said residents were contaminating their recycling bins.
 The pitiful replacement bring sites the council has installed have simply become fly tip hotspots.
This site on Havelock Road in Normanton ward rapidly became a fly tip hot spot
 

 
So the council removed it - meaning residents totally lost their ability to recycle -
 NO ALTERNATIVE HAS BEEN PROVIDED.
 

 
On a similar theme at Grove Street in the Arboretum ward the council also installed a fly tip hot spot
and if the council doesn't empty the recycling site when full what message does it send to the public?
 

 
Some residents care enough to gather their plastics and even mark the bags as plastics in a vain hope that what they are taking to the recycling site will be successfully recycled.
 
 
Meanwhile over in Hampden Street, Normanton bin contamination led to rejected bins - but at no point in the six weeks that three blue bins sat festering on the street did the councils bin men tag the bins as contaminated!
 then all of a sudden the bin men emptied two of the bins even though they still contained the same level of contamination that must have led to their rejection.
 

 
So the social media front is of a council looking to promote recycling -
 something that they have not gone out of their way to do in recent times but out on the street residents who feel they have a right to recycle still suffer a 2nd class service with random bring sites that are then either removed or simply not maintained to a high standard.
In some cases residents do not even get a 2nd class service -
 
THEY GET NO SERVICE
 
 

©SIMON BACON 2017