Pendle Talks Rubbish

[Callunna]

Pendle is asking for your views on its rubbish collection service via an online & offline form. You’ve got till 30 July to add your two pennorth:

http://www.feedbacksurveys.org.uk/pendlewaste

The “talks rubbish” pun is theirs, not mine, I might add.

[Tardis]

done that one too

[Tardis]

I attended the Focus Group for this in Colne last night, apparently only 4 appeared at the equivalent in Barnoldswick last Tuesday.

It was a little boring

I have a copy of the new policy statement in draft form if anyone wishes to read it.

Apparently there are over 14,000 working hours in the Community Crime department (taking out the 5 weeks of holidays for each of the 8 full time personnel), those that follow up on fly tipping, dog poop etc & hand out tickets & educate

Apart from that it costs over £7000 to produce & deliver the recycling note & waste collection calendar,

[Callunna]

I fully intended going to the Barlick meeting but I had another meeting in Manchester that evening.

I imagine there have been livelier events but I was sorry to have missed it.

[Tizer]

Apart from that it costs over £7000 to produce & deliver the recycling note & waste collection calendar.

We recently cut someone's printing bill by 50% by getting them to use a local printer instead of doing it through an Internet service. Many people nowadays assume that Internet services are always cheaper than those in your local town but they are often wrong - and its a shame for all those local businesses who work hard to keep costs down. In this case it was a printed product for local distribution and it now benefits from also having the name of a local printer on the back cover. The Internet service did the printing in Belgium!

[Stanley]

I can never understand why they send us the flyer every year when the collection hasn't changed. Why not just tell those who's days have been changed by letter? The world is 'communication' mad! Collection is regular and works well, that's all that matters. (And Mark, our regular street-sweeper is a good lad!)

[Tardis]

I actually agree with you Stanley, you only really need to know when the bins won't be picked up over Christmas.

On the cost for the leaflets, it is made up of about £2k for the printing & £5k for delivery, no one actually mentioned how much it actually cost to put the leaflet together, which is again another hidden saving.

I had to go to the Colne one because I was at the West Craven Area Committee meeting in Earby at the same time

The other two areas they were concerned about were litter, & cleansing...particularly about communicating the street sweeper the day after the bins are emptied

[Tardis]

I got a response today from Pendle about the sweeping of the car parks.

The hand sweeper does them every day

The mechanical sweeper does the co-op one every other week

Must be a lot of litter about

[Whyperion]

Certainly there is a small build up of litter ( and vegetation ) in the Gutters by the kerbs in and around the Co-Op car park.

[Stanley]

"Must be a lot of litter about" Yup, and Mark works hard at it, including sweeping the corners the sweeper can't reach and shovelling the hard stuff up. How about praising him for how well he performs?

[David Whipp]

Caught up with Mark on my Wednesday perambulation whilst he was sweeping his round.

Last year, we asked for an increase in the handsweeping hours in Barlick, as we didn't seem to be getting a fair crack compared to other townships in Pendle. (Powers that be turned this down...). Mark does the routes he's intructed to, other streets are left to the mechanical sweepers (who can't deal with inaccessible stuff).

A problem on the car parks, and a lot of streets as well, is that the mechanical sweepers can't sweep the gutters with all the cars parked in the way.

I've suggested an occasional Sunday sweep in town centres and car parks with the mechanical sweeper to keep on top of the debris that accumulates, but haven't yet got PTB to agree. ("It'll cost, tha knows.")

Me and Hugh hand swept the Wellhouse Road car park gutters before Bloom judging in the summer and collected several bags of grit and debris. Given our second Gold Award, it was worth the effort! (Worth the effort anyway to be able to be proud about the appearance of our town - if only for a few short days.)

An old friend of mine had a phrase:

"There are three types of people: those who throw litter; those who don't; and those who pick it up."

If we can't reduce the folk in the first lot, we need to have more people in the last!

[Whyperion]

How about an evening Mechanical Sweep ( or early morning ) , near closing time at the co-op there are fewer cars parked.

Leeds,Westminster and Ribble Valley have litter bins that are split for recyclables and general rubbish , cannot Pendle do the same ? There is also scope for issuing fines for the dropping of litter , which might reduce the incidence of category one ( Being Barnoldswick of course I would suggest that any steps towards this should be done as a warning for a couple of weeks before a bit of a full implementation ).

Although there are some comments elsewhere that Lancashire County Council has outlived its usefulness , is there not scope to create a common recycling and waste management policy and implementation accross all Lancashire's district and borough councils, if facilities can be shared this should increase revenue for recycling sales and reduce landfill and similar costs.
{Edit and Add }
Noting from below that the recycling has been in part a volunteer effort , the other thought I had was the use of persons on Community Service ( properly trained and supervised by paid council staff , where many hands could make light work ) Liaison on larger events with the LCC timing of collections might save a bit of effort. I think some of the paper bins ( in Pendle and other places ) are operated by independent companies , whose choice of definition of waste paper is a bit of a nightmare to follow , yellow pages , or not , envelopes , or not , card or cardboard (whats the difference ? ) inclusion of plastic bags. Quite simply in my view is that if an item has a recycling sticker logo on it ( with appropriate number , letters or other marking ) then the local authority should provide a clear and convenient location to re-cycle , which should be co-located at retailers in excess of a given sq meterage of sales space.
How should this be paid for - well from a mix of general exchequer VAT receipts , corporation tax and business rates and import duties , as its the profits from consumers that give rise to much of the waste chain.

[David Whipp]

Some good suggestions from whyperion there.

I'm pursuing the 'out of hours' sweeping thing (whether Sundays or early or late).

Some of the split litter/recycling bins have been tried out in Pendle (Colne centre comes to mind). In Barlick, we'd be grateful for small issues to be dealt with like moving some bins to better locations, providing more bins with fag stubbing plates etc.

During large events, we usually provide different bins for recyclable stuff. Marjorie Adams is very diligent at sorting through the waste to maximise recylcled material. Earlier this year, we were all outfaced when we did the Jubilee event of the square. We could barely keep up with emptying the empties out of the bins. I was staggered that we ended up with four trade waste skips worth of mainly cans and bottles (and Chubby's cardboard chip boxes). Unfortunately, we were too busy/too few to manage the unexpected amount of waste, and most of it went to landfill...

The districts and county have worked reasonably closely with each other on a joint waste strategy over the years, and are mostly singing off the same hymn sheet.

( I can remember the jubilation when we won our campaign to get a glass recyclling skip in Barnoldswick many moons ago. At the time, it was a revolution! How times have changed....)

By the by, the shrubs have been cut back on the Rainhall Car Park so that the recycling skips can move from the Wellhouse Car park to make way for the displaced parking due to the War Memorial work (if you follow that.). I'm expecting the bins to be moved next week.

[Tardis]

"Must be a lot of litter about" Yup, and Mark works hard at it, including sweeping the corners the sweeper can't reach and shovelling the hard stuff up. How about praising him for how well he performs?

I always do, but if the method is wrong, he'll never keep on top of it all

Rather than the person concentrate on the process, and get it right so that public services demonstrate exactly what they are capable of

[Tardis]

and I do believe that throwing more money at the problem is not the answer because it wouldn't resolve the fundamental underlying issues