Doncaster City Council launches new campaign to prevent fly tipping.
March 23rd saw the big spring cleanup in Burghwallis, part of the annual national campaign. Local volunteers collected 18 bin bags of litter along the roads leading out of the village ( or into the village depending on your view point). Collecting other people’s rubbish has an element of satisfaction; you have removed the unsightly mess dumped by idiots and perhaps stopped innocent wildlife from injuring themselves.
Despite the effort of the volunteers, and the “Don’t Mess With Doncaster”. programme of the city council the day after the clean-up some tossers left an entire trailer loaded with rubbish along Abbés Walk
But perhaps the real irony is 90% of the collected litter is recyclable. Aluminium cans, plastic bottles, paper, hard plastic could all be put to future use. The problem is the additional time needed to complete this exercise along with the necessary safeguards required, for no one knows the origin of the litter and whether there is any contamination.
Doncaster has launched a new programme to catch and prosecute the tossers that also involves the use of clandestine cameras. But this can be futile if people continue to avoid all social reasoning and dump junk out of shear laziness. How can you monitor the vast metropolitan area that is Doncaster City? The problem is complex and the secondary move by the city council to tighten the scrutiny of what we recycle in the blue and green wheelie bins and boxes could exacerbate the problem. We wait to see.
Apparently the council wastes some £300,000 a year from contaminated waste, when a whole load of collected recyclables is rejected because someone has placed the wrong material in the wrong bin. This wasted cash could have been better utilised in dealing with the problem at source. We must hope the educational programme is effective. In support of the exercise the City team has produced an online list of items that can and can’t be recycled. giving you the correct choice between the blue and black bins, and the waste recycling depots – but definitely not tossed on the verge.