Recycling in Brighton

[deletebeepbeepbeep]

The resources available for recycling in Brighton are an absolute joke.

You would think the Green Parties easiest win would have been to significantly improve recycling in Brighton, making it easier and simpler to recycle your waste. However, according to the Council's stats recycling has actually gone DOWN whilst the Green Party have been in power.

I want to try and discard some small broken electrical items following a move of house. The Council helpfully list about 15 collection points across the City for small electrical items - I went to one at The Level, no 'bin' present, went to one at BRIGHTON TOWN HALL no 'bin' present, thankfully I was third time lucky.*

It would have been so easy for me to say forget it and chuck it all in the bin for it to end up being dumped in a whole in the ground. According to a friend who lives in Tandridge not only will they collect normal recyclables they will pick up parcels of clothes, batteries, electrical equipment for recycling and one large item for recycling a week.

For GOODNESS SAKE, surely this is the first and easiest thing that the Green Council could have sorted out?

Ranting after a frustrating morning.

 

[Wrong-Direction]

They're too busy f***ing up all the roads!

 

[ThePompousPaladin]

I think you've been a bit easy on them to be honest, it is pretty woeful.

Is it contracted out to a private firm? Or is it still in house? If it is contracted out, would it be too hopeful to think that part of the renegotiation was performance related...

 

[Notters]

I found the collection service in Brighton fantastic. Much better than in Lewes where you have to separate everything into 57 different bags and boxes.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

There was an interesting item on the radio yesterday - an interview with someone from Veolia, who run the incinerators at Southwark and Newhaven.

Their representative was asked a question about the fact that Southwark Council achieves significantly less than the national average in terms of meeting recycling targets. The reason that Veolia's man gave for this "failure" was that the average household in Southwark was occupying premises that presented a challenge to achieving recycling targets - a lot of people live in flats, where conserving and storing materials for recycling collections is difficult. It's much easier to bin stuff.

Maybe the same applies in Brighton & Hove? - a lot of flats and multi-occupancy buildings. And maybe not the fault of the Council, just the way things are in a city like ours.

 

[TWOCHOICEStom]

There was an interesting item on the radio yesterday - an interview with someone from Veolia, who run the incinerators at Southwark and Newhaven.

Their representative was asked a question about the fact that Southwark Council achieves significantly less than the national average in terms of meeting recycling targets. The reason that Veolia's man gave for this "failure" was that the average household in Southwark was occupying premises that presented a challenge to achieving recycling targets - a lot of people live in flats, where conserving and storing materials for recycling collections is difficult. It's much easier to bin stuff.

Maybe the same applies in Brighton & Hove? - a lot of flats and multi-occupancy buildings. And maybe not the fault of the Council, just the way things are in a city like ours.

Wouldn't happen in Sweden...

Seriously though - a very high percentage of people living here live in flats. But even so, everyone separates their waste into different bins. Most apartment blocks have a station outside where you can leave organic, plastic and card/paper. There's also system in place for cans and plastic bottles whereby you take them to the local supermarket, stick them in a machine and get money back for each can you recycle (though that cost is included when you buy the product originally)

The types of buildings/occupancy shouldn't really matter, I don't see how the cost of rubbish collection here is too different from than in the UK, but what I do see is very different attitudes of the people. They all have 2 (or more) small bins in the kitchen rather than one huge one and they all take them out on a daily basis.

I've lost where I was going with this one... but yes. Bins.

 

[turienzo's lovechild]

I barely even give it a second thought in Shoreham- it just seems to be picked up at fairly regular intervals (regularly enough that it doesn't end up all over the street) and is very straight forward- whack it in your wheelie bin and leave it to us. When I lived in B&H it always seemed like such a CHORE

 

[desprateseagull]

Mr beepbeep,were the items still working? (and safe?!) - consider offering up on freecycle / freegle, or gumtree maybe.. whoever wants it, collects it! A great way to give products a new home, clear out your junk, and reduce land eco thingys..

https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/GreenCycleSussex

or

http://www.gumtree.com/search?q=&search_category=freebies&search_location=Brighton

 

[Westdene Seagull]

There was an interesting item on the radio yesterday - an interview with someone from Veolia, who run the incinerators at Southwark and Newhaven.

Their representative was asked a question about the fact that Southwark Council achieves significantly less than the national average in terms of meeting recycling targets. The reason that Veolia's man gave for this "failure" was that the average household in Southwark was occupying premises that presented a challenge to achieving recycling targets - a lot of people live in flats, where conserving and storing materials for recycling collections is difficult. It's much easier to bin stuff.

Maybe the same applies in Brighton & Hove? - a lot of flats and multi-occupancy buildings. And maybe not the fault of the Council, just the way things are in a city like ours.

Cityclean say that recycling rates within the city are better than the suburbs. To combat this they are considering scrapping the black box recycling in the suburbs and replecing it with a wheelie bin recycling service which apparently tends to have a better rate.

 

[wellquickwoody]

I live about 700 yards from the local recycling depot/tip in Leighton Road Hove. At a guess over the last weekend it may or may not have been open on Good Friday, Easter Day and Bank Holiday Monday, it will have been open between 9am and 1pm on Saturday. The same kind of facility in Brighton Road Shoreham was open from 9am to 5pm minimum over at least 3 of the 4 days. Guess where my recycling/refuse went?

 

[Triggaaar]

a lot of people live in flats, where conserving and storing materials for recycling collections is difficult. It's much easier to bin stuff.

Maybe the same applies in Brighton & Hove? - a lot of flats and multi-occupancy buildings. And maybe not the fault of the Council, just the way things are in a city like ours.

It's true that it's harder for the people with a lack of storage space, but what's that got to do with the OP? He's not saying that residents don't bother, he's saying that the council resources aren't there for him to use.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

I live about 700 yards from the local recycling depot/tip in Leighton Road Hove. At a guess over the last weekend it may or may not have been open on Good Friday, Easter Day and Bank Holiday Monday, it will have been open between 9am and 1pm on Saturday. The same kind of facility in Brighton Road Shoreham was open from 9am to 5pm minimum over at least 3 of the 4 days. Guess where my recycling/refuse went?

Planning permission has been sought to extend the opening hours of Hove on a number of occassions and they have always been resisted by the locals ..... thus the applications have failed.

 

[deletebeepbeepbeep]

Well, my main point was - surely Brighton Council should be making it as easy as possible to recycle things. Do I really need to traipse halfway across town and back again to recycle a broken DVD player and some unwanted speakers.

And shouldn't they make sure that the information they have out there about recycling services is clear and up to date, in order to stop people wasting their time and discouraging them from trying to recycle in the future.

It just baffles me that in Brighton of all places recycling should be EASY not a chore.

 

[deletebeepbeepbeep]

Related article:

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/1162...ecycling_rate_one_of_worst_in_country/?ref=mr

Councils figures on recycling rates:

http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/con...ish-and-street-cleaning/cityclean-performance

 

[DavePage]

Least they get their own lane

 

[gregbrighton]

Bring back the Rag n Bone man!

 

[brighton bluenose]

I live about 700 yards from the local recycling depot/tip in Leighton Road Hove. At a guess over the last weekend it may or may not have been open on Good Friday, Easter Day and Bank Holiday Monday, it will have been open between 9am and 1pm on Saturday. The same kind of facility in Brighton Road Shoreham was open from 9am to 5pm minimum over at least 3 of the 4 days. Guess where my recycling/refuse went?

Why would you bother commenting on this if your comment is based on 'a guess'?!

 

[wellquickwoody]

Why would you bother commenting on this if your comment is based on 'a guess'?!

Because it saved me the time of checking it all out properly just to comment on a thread on a football forum which really does not carry that much weight out there in the real world? But hey ho, here we go.....

Leighton Road, Hove opening times: Mon - Fri 8am - 4.30pm, Sat 8.30am - 1.30pm, Sun 10.30am - 1.30pm, Bank Holidays CLOSED

Brighton Road, Shoreham opening times: Mon - Fri 8am - 7pm, Sat & Sun 9am - 7pm, Bank Holidays 9am - 7pm

So my guesswork was pretty damn close to reality and was actually based upon personal experience. That is something you might care to use ,if you possess any, before raising stupid, pedantic questions which just make you look like a silly wxxker.

 

[Horton's halftime iceberg]

From my understanding the minority council has been vetoed often by the Tories and Labour voting against plans, it is a strange anomaly though and the lorries they inherited cannot fit down roads like ours so 187 flats have no kerb side recycling but we do have large bins for most things on the road that are collected by smaller lorries.

I don't think its a major issue as the council probably meets its targets, but it can be frustrating on an individual basics sometimes, both the dumps have vey good facilities now as does the level just around the corner from me.

 

[Guinness Boy]

There was an interesting item on the radio yesterday - an interview with someone from Veolia, who run the incinerators at Southwark and Newhaven.

Their representative was asked a question about the fact that Southwark Council achieves significantly less than the national average in terms of meeting recycling targets. The reason that Veolia's man gave for this "failure" was that the average household in Southwark was occupying premises that presented a challenge to achieving recycling targets - a lot of people live in flats, where conserving and storing materials for recycling collections is difficult. It's much easier to bin stuff.

Maybe the same applies in Brighton & Hove? - a lot of flats and multi-occupancy buildings. And maybe not the fault of the Council, just the way things are in a city like ours.

Lived in Tokyo for eight months. Flats / apartments are the norm in Tokyo, some of them incredibly small. I can only speak for my block but it had a small building that just housed communal recycling. You had to split glass, PET, cans, "burnables", "non-burnables" (no we never got the hang of that one) and food. Everyone simply made one trip a day to the communal bins which were emptied, from memory, twice a week. They certainly never overflowed. Simples. But then they can make the trains run on time as well despite a similarly crowded commuter network. And earthquakes.