Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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What's happening to our recycling services? My local authority is one of the better ones but I had a rant in this column last year, about how it and other councils were introducing charges for items such as bathroom ceramics - and that opening hours were being stupidly cut, with many facilities only being accessible to working residents at weekends, causing hour-plus long queues.
I warned that both changes would lead to fly-tipping. You know what a pain it is to take things to the tip... items can get wet before you load them into your car; you might have a rusty BBQ, muddy garden tools or snail-ridden cuttings, or you may have wrestled a mattress onto the roof and taken ages to secure it, then sat in a queue for hours...
I hate visiting the tip, which is why I collected three carrier bags of silver foil before deciding it was time to recycle it. Working from home, I can go when it's quiet and I drove straight in via the high gates, only to be stopped by a new barrier halfway along the access road (wonder how much that cost us?) where I was ignored while the attendant continued his paperwork. Eventually, he looked up and asked me for I.D. I referred him to the facility's sticker on my car, showing I lived locally. He told me I needed a new one for 2017. News to me and there's nothing on the website...
Luckily my daughter had I.D. so we were allowed in; had she not had it, I'd have been turned away - and had I already queued for ages, I'd have been furious! The staff told me there's no longer a demand for my carefully washed foil and said to put it with scrap metal; previously I'd been told to throw a car-full of cardboard into 'general rubbish', as the cardboard skip was full. Both times I returned home past queuing recyclers with what I'd tried to dump, wondering why I bother to recycle. Those without I.D. may have fly-tipped. If we're to be encouraged to recycle, there has to be better communication and service. Dumps need to open a couple of evenings for residents who can't visit before 16:00 and don't wish to queue at weekends.
We also need to know that what we recycle, is valued.
And tell me please, who collects silver foil?
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Yours,
26th January 2017