When I was growing up, we never thought about rubbish. We chucked stuff in the bin with high abandon.
Nowadays we recognize that whatever is chucked in a bin does not magically disappear. It all ends up somewhere. As individuals, we can make efforts to minimize the environmental harm of our personal habits. For example, if you feel the need to carry a drink with you everywhere, please buy a reusable bottle and fill it up from the tap, rather than wasting your money on single-use plastic bottles with water of less regulated quality.
But individuals are not the only players in the rubbish game. Business and local government must also play their part.
What can Westminster City Council do to minimize the environmental harm of all our discards?
Green Waste Scheme
Westminster City Council is one of the few local authorities which has no green waste scheme. I hear rumours that a pilot scheme being slowly introduced in some areas now. It is shocking that we are so behind the rest of the world. Of course, most people living in Westminster do not have gardens, but we all have food waste.
A lot more could be done to publicize and speed up the roll-out of the green waste scheme. While this is being rolled out, we could provide a central collection point for green waste for those who have gardens, at least during specific times of the year when gardeners give their foliage a haircut.
Recycling
I have tried to find out what happens to our recycling. It seems to be a topic shrouded in mystery. I do know that for some municipalities, recycling ultimately ends up either being shipped to China where it is burned. Or it is dumped on one of the less popular Turkish beaches. Both these outcomes are shameful.
I have no idea where Westminster recycling ends up. We need full transparency. Otherwise, separating recycling from general waste is mere theatre. People can be fined when they make a mistake about what to put in recycling or if they put recycling out on the wrong day. If we have no confidence about what happens to our recycling, criminalizing people for such mistakes makes a mockery of the law.
Minimizing the need for recycling is another urgent issue. Westminster City Council should be a leader in liaising with business about minimizing packaging and the use of plastic.
General Waste
We often look through rose-tinted spectacles at the past, but I remember the streets of Westminster being spic and span when I was growing up here in the early 1970’s. Now, there seems to be rubbish on every block. Our recycling collection points are often overflowing. The big skips meant for council workers to deposit street rubbish are magnets for mountains of rubbish. These are on blocks where a modest flat costs in the range of a million pounds. In modern parlance, this is not a good look.
The council worker on my street is very diligent and clearly takes pride in his work. I’ve asked him about this issue and he has various ideas, but Westminster City Council does not seem to harness the collective knowledge and insight of the people collecting our rubbish. Instead, I get the round-robin letters through my door in which we residents are regularly berated for our rubbish-depositing transgressions.
It’s time to try a different approach.