Rubbish Wheelie Bins

The refuse problem associated with Arthurs Hill is unfortunately a focal point of concern rather than just considered to be a symptom of deprivation. The following pictures show some of the back streets of Arthurs Hill on a Monday (collection day). Somehow the windy climate and the constant tipping of furniture including Mattresses, which seem to breed like fruit flies, due to the transient population, means the back streets often look like dumping grounds. This means it takes at least two rubblish collections a week to just keep it at a tolerable level. The first collection being a general plastic bag grabbing exercise and the second a more thorough cleansing!

People throw rubbish over walls into the back lanes regularly because back gates do not open or they are too lazy to come down the stairs. The pictures below are of 1999 and 2003 to allow comparisons - I leave it up to you to decide if you feel that has been a significant improvement - I don't think there has been.

Click on the link to see the full sized image
Back of Stanton st	Back of Tamworth	Back of Croydon	Back of Dilston
2003 any better?? (below)

The various initiatives that have been attempted are by and large of the 'blame and shame' variety. Is this really appropriate?

In a particularly hostile frame of mind Newcastle City council decided to serve a notice on all occupants in Arthur's Hill regarding "Household waste from premises". This has happened at least twice in the period between 1999 and 2003. You can see the details here:

View first page, View second page, View ethnic translations

Considering that most people in the area are unemployed, transient and unable to pay the possible fine, as well as for them the threat of receiving a custodial sentence as a slight inconvienience, this approach could be questioned. Furthermore enforcement without CCTV (probably an excellent cost effective idea but not very prominent in Arthur's Hill and still not so in 2003) means a great disparity between prevalence and reported incidence of the offence.

Alternative, more community derived strategies have been attempted. The local newsletter usually has an article about the problem View Rubbish problem in local newsletter.

The Newletter (March 1999 - only issue?) of the Moorside and Wingrove Environmental Action Programme introduced the FREE BIN BAG programme. This ment that each flat received a set of bags (=3 bags per week) every couple of weeks. It is interesting to note that Arthurs Hill residents receive the relatively fragile plastic bags whereas Jesmond / Heaton have Sturdy Wheelie Bins, for less windy environments, however all changed in 2000 when wheelie bins were introduced to Arthurs hill. This did initially produce some improvement. But looking at the above pictures suggests that nothing much has really happened. The wheelie bins in Arthurs hill have actually created problems with, I have had to request a replacement already ( and it took over two months for a replacement):

• Children playing with / pinching and moving them
• People setting fire to them
• Using them to help burglars climb over walls
• Tipping out of contents to see if there is anything of value / useetc.

Refuse - Possible Solutions:

The wheelie been scheme is opbviously a low cost blanket solution which may work well in affluent areas of Newcastle but it does not work in Arthurs Hill. Lets consider what might be done here:

1. Facilitate effective shame and blame strategy by monitoring:

• The residents by errecting more CCTVs (Possibly develop links with EU projects regarding use of temporary / mobile devices?)
• The Waste collectors, DO we really need so many. How are they supervised? Could they be more efficient, effective etc.

2. Design, develop, prototype, and evaluate Built-in waste collection units which are accessable from both top and bottom flats and can be emptied via the back lanes. Perhaps we need to go back to the days when the soil men came around? Surely the university / council civil engineering departments could put a project together that could attract funding, and it might be more effective than some of the other more airy fairy community projects.

Some people will prefer the approach of resident education. But is that realistic!

Written by robin@organplayers.co.uk Date: 2/02/2004