As you may be aware, those of us who reside down the unfasionable east end of East Claremont Street are always cheered to receive correspondence from your good selves. So I’m sure you can imagine our delight when the most recent communiqué from your offices dropped through our letter boxes at the end of 2014 detailing the bin and recycling arrangements for the forthcoming year.
For those of us fortunate enough to live in houses, green landfill and brown garden waste wheelie bins were to be collected on alternate Fridays, while blue bottle/paper and red cardboard recycling boxes were due for uplift on alternate Tuesdays.
This timetable has, more or less, described what has taken place up until last week, when the red cardboard recycling boxes remained uncollected on the street and then, this week, the blue boxes were not uplifted.
Your website mentions a 'Tenement waste and recycling pilot' in East Claremont Street and states that "The red and blue box collections will stop if you use the shared bins. If you have a wheelie bin for your waste then your service will not change.” Unfortunately, while we are told that the 'pilot will run for six months' no actual dates are given, so it is not possible to tell if this arrangement currently applies.
However, somewhat confusingly, elsewhere on your website you offer a downloadable Recycling Calendar for East Claremont Street (P4 Fri2B 9ii)) that details collections using the green wheelie bin for recycling and a grey bin for landfill.
Again, we have received no information from you in respect of these arrangements, nor, indeed, do we have any grey bins.
Yesterday, in an attempt to clarify the situation, I telephoned your 'Waste Services - general enquiries' phone number (Tel. 0131 529 3030) where a very helpful gentleman repeatedly reassured me that we should have received written information from CEC regarding this matter. Unfortunately, while these reassurance were very comforting, they did not really help with the issue of what to do with all of the recyclable material that we had carefully sorted and stored, as you have not actually contacted us since the end of last year.
Your telephone advisor made the suggestion that we could perhaps dispose of our recyclable waste in the communal on-street recycling bins.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the only recycling bin nearby is at the red 7 location shown on the map below.
As you can see from the photograph below, it would clearly be ridiculous to think that this mini-bin could possibly be intended to provide recycling facilities for two-thirds of a 0.3-mile-long, largely tenemented, street.
Added to the minimal capacity, this bin also appears to be permanently full/infrequently emptied, with the contents often overflowing onto the pavement.
As for glass recycling, the nearest provision appears to be quarter of a mile away in Melgund Terrace in the form of another lone, and largely permanently full, mini-bin.
Your telephone operative took my mobile number and assured me that someone from the Waste Team would call me in the near future to suggest a course of action, but I have yet to hear anything.
While I am reasonably confident that I should put our green wheelie bin out onto the street for collection tomorrow morning, I have no way of knowing if it should contain landfilll or recyclable waste.
In summary, some, or possibly all, of our waste collections appear to have been withdrawn and, in the absence of any communication from CEC, it is impossible to determine what to do with a large part of our domestic waste.
I fully appreciate that at this time of the year CEC’s priorities must inevitably focus on its contractual involvement in shed-and-decking-based retail and event management, but I am becoming concerned that, come the New Year, I shall be unable to get past the accumulated recyclables at my front door in order to go and pay my Council Tax … and I know how much you need the money for upcoming projects.
Please can you advise?
Sincerely
Neil Jones
East Claremont Street
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Elaine Farrow At the same time as our new grey landfill bins were delivered, large stickers were put on our existing green bins indicating that they were now to be used for recycling. I would expect that the author's green bins should continue to be used for landfill waste until that happens.
Lynn Henni We got a letter heralding new bins 2 weeks before they arrived so folk put recycling boxes out to no avail. Tweeting got response but only in Twitterland. CEC needs to improve its communication!
Alastair Wright Separate glass (& battery) recycling is just discouraging potential recyclers. Don't the CoEC think 2 bins (3 if you have a garden) is enough?
Update: Spurtle understands that Neil Young's e-mail was yesterday forwarded to the head of Waste Services by Nick Gardner (Labour) on behalf of all four Leith Walk ward councillors.