epolitix had this little excerpt today:
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs publishes guidance for councils on how to tackle fly-tipping by householders. “Councils have tended to concentrate on clearance. That is vital, but there needs to be more emphasis on preventing fly-tipping happening in the first place,” said environment minister Ben Bradshaw. “Prevention, coupled with coming down hard on those who are caught fly-tipping, could help reduce the problem and save money.”
Ah Ben Bradshaw - “coming down hard” what nonsense! Really - will we never get away from this obsession with punishment? oh yes you mention prevention - and how? that”s what you want to focus on my friend - forget the punishment. the reason people fly-tip is very simple: what else are you going to do? Especially if you haven”t a car in london and you know if you leave stuff “outside” someone”s gonna come and get it. in the absence of formal exchange/re-use mechanisms that are actually convenient, what the hell is anyone actually meant to do, for goodness sake? If there are freecylce type schemes or Re-use type schemes in the Borough that Councils actually supported instead of leaving for the voluntary sector to deal with - we may get actually somewhere. If Councils were really bothered, they”d have worked this out by now. So take for example the disgraceful state of re-use and recycling in Southwark - right on the GLA and Ken”s doorstep. Alongside the few recycling bins there was a textile/materials recycling thingie - it got full pretty quick,
( obviously in demand) so what do the Council do - provide some more textile bins? Nope - just take the existing one away. Very smart.
And this is how the Capital is going to hit its recycling targets? It seems ( and i”ve found this out through my work with local authorities) that basically because the whole business of recycling is so difficult for them to work out ( something to do with supply chain logistics - hmmph) and expensive, it turns out its cheaper for them to miss their targets. Right. Wonderful.
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