Recently in Recycling Category

I am getting a bit of a reputation for being obsessed with waste management. This is not because, as one senior regeneration practitioner (aka A Right Charmer) put it yesterday (in a Board meeting, I ask you!): "Sadek, you're full of s**t" - although, of course, that it undoubtedly the case.

No, it is more that I firmly believe that regeneration professionals, with their ability to work cross-sectorally, deal with multiple layers of alliances and coalitions when setting up partnerships and manage the vagaries of "cocktail funding" (sane people should not go there!) will, ultimately, provide the cadre force to tackle this fraught issue for once and for all. The new green jobs will be - in large part - in waste management. And I intend for BURA members to step up to the plate on this.

How we deal with our waste as a society is something that is fundamental to every single one of us. There are legions of horrendous stories of how local authorities get this so very wrong and I heard another story this week that just makes me realise how badly executed strategies can cause extraordinary damage.

My mate who lives in Brighton has been telling me about another instance. The council there, in its infinite wisdom, has imposed massive, ugly street bins into which residents dispose their non-recyclable refuse. Every morning an enormous and noisy brute of a vehicle appears to lift the said bin and empty its contents into its container and the bin is then put back in place on the road. So far so good.

I am lucky enough to live in a fairly sizable semi in West London but my house is now almost completely given over to recycling.

About six months ago, the London borough in which I reside had a complete rush of blood to the head.

They delivered several (seven I think) containers of different sizes and shapes: there's a big blue bag for paper, a big green basket thing for garden waste, a large white sack for plastics, two different sized bins-with-lids for food and the traditional green box for the rest. Oh, and black sacks for "normal weekly collection".

Well it's all very laudable in intent I must say, but have we all gone completely mad?

Every Wednesday morning, four or five refuse trucks of one sort or another get wedged behind each other in my suburban street as they compete to pick up their own particular sort of rubbish.

The plastics collection is fortnightly (and alternates with the garden waste collection) which, alongside the slippage which occurs in a bank holiday week, means you have to have a Prince 2 diploma in project management just to remember what to put out on what day.