Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Back to the streets for strikers

Well, it's all over.

As of this week, bin collections in the Leeds City Council area will - hopefully - be getting back to normal. Great news for all residents, who can expect an end to the piles of rubbish on the city's streets.

And great news for the refuse collectors who will have a few weeks of regular pay before Christmas. They may not all be happy about the terms of their return to work, but with more than two-thirds voting in favour of accepting the council's offer, residents can keep their fingers crossed things will not deteriorate again.

Information on what the agreement means in terms of bin collections is available via the council's website. Apart from some slightly conflicting information released over the past 11 weeks, I have to say the bin strike has had little impact on me. My street has not had the dozens of bin bags spilling their contents onto the floor that have been seen elsewhere. We've had no rats (unless you count the one dead one the cats left in the middle of the floor a couple of weeks ago, but given that they also deposited what looked like the remains of a pigeon in the same spot, I'm not putting that down to bin strikes). I tended to side with the strikers anyway, which perhaps increased my willingness to make a few adaptations during the strike action.

But what struck me the most was what I found out about the attitudes of some residents to waste and recycling. After my green recycling bin filled up, I made several trips to the local tip in Harehills. I spotted quite a few other people doing the same, dropping off cardboard and tins and old newspapers in the clearly-labelled "green bin waste" skips.

The incredible thing was the number of people who simply empties whatever was in the back of their cars into the nearest skip, not even looking at the signs showing what kind of waste went where. During the busiest periods, such as Sunday afternoons, there were council employees on hand to clear full skips and direct people to the correct skip. Despite this, I saw someone pulling up, dragging a three-piece suite out of their van and chucking it into the "green bin waste" skip while a frustrated yellow-jacketed man watched in amazement. He called to them to throw the furniture into a different pile, but by then there were only a couple of cushions left. Cue two yellow jackets half-climbing into a skip to retrieve the sofas as, supervision being momentarily absent, six other people took the opportunity to throw in a broken stepladder, old dog bed, half a tree and what looked like the contents of a fridge.

Perhaps it's just me, but I find behaviour like this incredibly arrogant. It's like people who knock something off a rail in a shop, turn round to look at the crumpled heap on the floor, then walk off, leaving it for a lowly shop assistant to pick up. Having worked in several customer service roles, I might be more sensitive to this kind of thing than others. There are things, for example, which I know people leave in cinemas which would make your stomach turn if I listed them here.

But whatever my reasons, I can't be the only one who thinks dumping your unwanted goods in any old way is rude. The council provides a thorough facility for everyone to get rid of rubbish quickly and easily, and employs people to help anyone who can't read the massive signs at the tip. The least people can do is make the three extra steps to put everything in the right place.

Or perhaps they're just so busy and important, they don't need to bother.

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