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Local discussion: Does Islington Council collect your recycling when you leave it out?

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    Does Islington or Harringey Council collect your recycling when you leave it out on the pavement?

    I left my recycling out in the see through recycling bags and Islington Council did not collect the recycling bags lots of times.The recycling bags were then left out on the street for a couple of weeks making the place look messy.I got fed up with this so now I don't recycle I just chuck my stuff in the bin like a couldn't care less chav pot mcdougal who is about as green as the Chinese government.

    Is it true that the people who collect the see through recycling bags that you leave out on the pavements in the borough of Islington are just paid for say an 8 hour shift and can go home when they have finished so they rush as fast as possible so they can go home as quick as possible and if this means some people who leave out their recycling don't get it collected who cares they are getting paid.

    Despite the fact that I left my recycling out the day before they are due to collect the recycling bags and I know that Islington Council regularly don't collect these recycling bags Islington Council continues to stuff throught the door loads of bumpf advertising how green they are, well they aren't green they are the opposite of green in my experience.

    I'm not going to carrry very heavy sacks of bottles and the like down to the local recycling bin on the pavement that will do my back in.

    Stroud Green Rd looks a mess regularly too they should clean more.

    I'm not interested in any excuses from Islington council because I know how the system works which is you put all your stuff into the recyle bags leave it on the pavement at the right time and day then they don't bother to collect them and the sacks sit there on the pavement so litter louts drop their beer cans and burger boxes next to the recycling sacks which makes the street look even worse.

    Islington Council needs to change its system of paying its people who collect the recycling sacks. Pay them bonuses on the basis of how many complaints they get so less genuine complaints more money for the workers.And dont let the recyclers go home before they done their shift so they are not incentivised to just rush as fast as possible and not collect the recycling.

    If you complain they just might improve for a week or two then it goes back to not bothering to collect the sacks again no doubt

    I'm not going to tell you where I live. Thanks to Islington council I now dont bother to recyce,yet I did recycling for years without complaint in another borough.

    We will judge Islington Council by actions not words in their adverts
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    Does Islington Council still do this? See old thread from 2005 called "Haringey or Islington". David wrote "my recycling doesn't end up in landfill in Indonesia". This is about a BBC TV programme which showed how recycled household waste from Islington borough was destined for landfill in Indonesia making a mockery of people who make the effort to bag up their recycling rather than binning it.

    One other issue is flytips: there are too many flytips in Islington and Haringey boroughs.Can't the council just employ a few more people to cycle around the boroughs to spot the flytips and arrange to get them cleaned up. The councils would only need to employ a couple of people on bicycles to just cycle around and jot down where the graffiti and flytips are to improve the boroughs alot I think.If they employed a few keen kids to cycle around the boroughs all day long and take a few photos on their mobile phone of dumped junk etc surely that would be a good use of council tax payers money.
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    I wanted to flag this up with any Haringey or Islington council councillors that might read this:

    I read about this on the other local community forum website called harringayonline.

    There was a thread on harringayonline recently called "rubbish in your neighbours garden".

    The thread refers to an article on guardian.co.uk called "eyesore rubbish vies for importance with BNP on local politicians agenda."

    This article is about the approach that Barking and Dagenham council has taken to the problem of junk dumped in front gardens in their borough. Dagenham Council have a new project called "eyesore gardens". They put a notice through the front door of houses that have loads of tatty junk dumped in the front garden saying remove the junk or we will bill you for taking the junk.If the landlords don't remove the junk from the front garden within 28 days the council takes the junk and bills the landlord.

    Does Haringey and Islington councils do this?
    • CommentAuthorandy
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2010
     
    We are Ninja

    Of the many things one might say about Islington council, in our street I can confirm that they do collect the recycling regularly and on time.

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    Yep, in my road too. I put the clear bags just by the front door and there's no problem with collections.
    • CommentAuthorDavid
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2010
     
    We are Ninja

    We have the green squarish bins for recycling. This is Haringey mind but they always collect unless there's something in the bin they won't take. Waxy cardboard type stuff which I'm finding hard to describe is one such thing. Any of that in the bin and the bin stays. Have you ensured your recycling is definitely only stuff they accept? When I first moved here I was chucking things in I assumed were recyclable till I got a leaflet one day that explained their process better.

    • CommentAuthorADGS
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2010
     
    Waxy cardboard as in eg juice cartons?

    I know that when we leave our recycling sacks out, they get picked up - but I don't know whether they just get chucked in with the bin bags. As a rule I just take bits and bobs at a time down to the recycle bins outside Tesco, it's dead near and on my way to most places anyway.
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    I've seen the chaps that go along with the recycling truck manually sorting it from my clear bag into the relevant sacks on the cart, which is admirable if somewhat labour intensive. I really can't be faffed to trot down to Tesco with my recycling if these fine fellows are happy to do it for me.
    • CommentAuthorDavid
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2010
     
    We are Ninja

    Yeah, Tetra Paks. Though just looking on their site they've been accepting them since Oct 2009 so that's old news now. Still, the gist was they don't take stuff if it violates their occasionally not obvious rules which may be an explanation.

    • CommentAuthorMisscara
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2010
     
    I moved to the Haringay side of SG 3 years ago. Nobody told me then, or since, what I can or can't put in my green box. So I just put in what I think I can, but then this results in the Herberts who are supposed to collect it just throwing box back and the contents spilling out across my front path. I caught them doing it once and asked why they wouldn't take it. This was apparently because I had a type of plastic packet on the top that they don't take. I asked why they could not have just taken the packet off and put the rest in the truck and put the packet back in the box in the usual place. They said that they don't have time to sort it out. I pointed out that they could have just left the whole box of rubbish where it was, and not spilled it all over the place, and that maybe they could leave a card or something. They said I do it all the time. I probably do, as I don't know what can go in or not. Why don't they tell us? Grrrrr!
    • CommentAuthorPapa L
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2010
     

    As a regular critic of Islington Council's moronic behaviour, I do have to admit they do a) collect my recycling and b) provide quite a good service compared to some horror stories you read.

    We have green boxes in the front garden, they collect the stuff from them and then make a vague attempt to put them back in people's front gardens, which can range from within ten feet of where they originally were to strewn all over the road and pavement with boxes and lids missing.

    On the basis that they still get things from our garden, haven't threatened to send me to Siberia for having a crisp packet out of place and manage to not pour more than 20% of the recycling over the front garden on any given day, I'm willing to accept this is a better service than most councils appear to offer.

    Having said that the ugly, dirty, overflowing recycling bin centrepiece on Islington's side of Stroud Green Road is shameful. Why not put this somewhere a little more out of the way?

    • CommentAuthorMisscara
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2010
     
    I agree they look awful, but surely the point is to have them in a prominent position, so that people are conscious of them, have easy access to them and therefore use them?

    If they were 'out of the way' do you think people would bother?
    • CommentAuthorDavid
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2010
     
    We are Ninja

    Misscara, here's Haringey's list of what you can recycle in your Green Box...

    • CommentAuthorADGS
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2010
     
    The Tesco bins only really seem to overflow at weekends or during especially bad weather, and I think part of the problem may in any case be bulk-dumping of unsuitable items (eg there are often a load of plastic bags in the paper bin).
    • CommentAuthormiss annie
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2010 edited
     
    The Tesco bins are an eyesore. Not as bad as the clothing one on Seven Sisters Rd (outside fitness first gym) though, it is regularly broken into by goodness knows what sort of reprobates and the clothes strewn hither and thither across the pavement. Thank goodness we don't have one of those. I wonder if they actually wear the clothes or take them round the ye olde car boot sale?
    • CommentAuthorPapa L
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2010
     

    Those eyesore bins are convenient I'll give them that - if they aren't full to overflowing.

    But ruining the widest part of the pavement on a road that is meant to be trying to be improved with an eyesore...is that progress?

    Stroud Green Road could seriously benefit from an aesthetic eye cast over its street furniture.

    • CommentAuthorMisscara
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2010
     
    Thanks David!
  18.  
    I too can confirm that recycling collections take place without problem on Corbyn Street (Islington) each Tuesday morning. I can't remember ever having a green bin left back because it contained illegal rubbish.

    Haringey seem quite good at actually sorting through bags on the spot to seperate paper/tin/glass/plastic etc when I walk past on Monday mornings.
    • CommentAuthormatt
    • CommentTimeFeb 25th 2010
     

    Our recycling was always taken away, Shaftesbury Road.

    There is list of items that you are allowed to put in it. Anything else they will not take away.

  20.  
    I read the comments from ‘Northern Heights’ with interest, and while he doesn't want excuses, I would like to say that feedback like this helps us to improve the service. We honestly do want to provide a great recycling service and where something's going wrong, we want to put it right.

    We'll be getting some extra monitoring carried out along Stroud Road over the next few weeks to check for ourselves exactly what's going on. If there's a problem with the collections not being made, we'll deal with it. In the mean time, I'd urge any resident living in a flat above a shop along Stroud Green Road to carry on recycling. Clear bags of recycling can be put out on the pavement in the evening for collection that the same evening. The bags themselves can be collected from libraries and we also deliver them every four months or so.

    We're actually one of the only Boroughs in London to provide a recycling service for flats above shops, but of course, we have to make sure the collections are reliable.

    Any problems with collections, please report them to Contact Islington (020 7527 2000) or email contact@islington.gov.uk, and please do keep recycling!

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