Friends of the Earth
Action Briefing Dec 99/Jan 00
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Birmingham Friends of the Earth Action Briefing Dec 99/Jan 00 |
One of the better kept secrets about Birmingham City Council's recycling activities is the collection service from 300-plus pubs, clubs, restaurants etc.
There is capacity for this scheme to expand. If your regular (or even occasional) 'drinker' is not on this scheme, please encourage the licensee to contact us. It's free of charge to the outlet, we provide the containers, and try to make it as smooth and simple as we can.
We also have a small number of sites on this scheme in people's front gardens. We're looking to expand this, too. The requirement is space for three, or possibly four, labelled wheelie dustbins, accessible to the public and the six-wheeled vehicle used to empty them. (The glass must be colour-separated: the fourth bin would be for whichever colour has filled up first.) Each bin has plan view dimensions of 580mm x 730mm.
The site in the picture is an FOE member's in a 50-house street in Handsworth, close to some pubs we service, and is emptied every four weeks.
We are not particularly interested in merely diverting glass bottles and jars which already go to bottle banks into bins in your front garden, so an important element is publicity. For this, we would produce a leaflet informing your neighbours of this new opportunity, and ask you to arrange delivery.
The 'Back of the Truck' sale of home composters and water butts from three sites resulted in some 7000 units being sold (and a slow stream of mail order enquiries continues.) In addition, all green garden waste delivered to the Council's five Public Waste Disposal Sites now goes to a central composting facility, for resale as a mulch or soil conditioner. This results in the recovery of many further thousands of tonnes per year for recycling.
Enquiries? Ring Phil Brook, Phil Palmer, John Rose on 0121 303 1935