How Thanet Council's Waste and cleanliness Policy is not working
The image below of Margate harbour at sunrise is made from 1503 images of litter that is strewn across the streets of Cliftonville and Margate. That I took on the 7th and 8th November 2007.
Thanet council states in this years annual report that it intends to increase fines for littering and dog fouling to 200 compared with just 15 for the year 2006. But these images alone add up to £90,180 or almost 76 band D council tax bills. This is just a small 2 mile section of the 312 miles of streets in Thanet. so is Thanet councils waste managment policy working?
Whilst there continues to be no wheelie bins or recycling collection bins for large parts of Thanet was the decision to bring waste collection in house wise?
Click here for the Galleries of all the images
Know a litter hot spot - report it anonomously to the Council via
TACKLING LITTER
The Home Office leaflet on tackling littering and dumping (PDF)
The state of our streets
I started this project as a response to the litter, dog mess and dumped white goods in the streets of Cliftonville and Margate. A state of affairs that has become a disgrace to the Island. As well as the Thanet council run 'Thanet is Beautiful' Photography competition. I can turn my camera out to sea and Thanet does indeed look beautiful - turn the camera inland and the truth is revealed.
The majority of the images were taken in only one street - the conjoined street of Warwick and Surrey road where over 600 images were taken of every piece of litter in the street. With the remainder being relatively well spread between the remainder of the streets. The next worst streets being Athelston road and the top part of Dalby Square and the alleyway between the two.
I stopped photographing cigarette butts as I would have had around 5 times as many images all of little brown sticks.
Whilst walking down Athelston Road I did notice a road sweeper who walked right down the road into an alleyway right past all the litter and rubbish on the street and poured himself a cup of coffee from his thermos. Before continuing on his way through Dalby Square and past the litter that I then photographed.
The road sweeper relaxing
Who's Talking Trash?
The majority of people of the Cliftonville West ward are in reciept of benefits. If you wanted to dispose of a sofa how much would you expect to pay for it to be removed by the council? over 1 fifth of your weekly income? For the average GP that would be £308 to remove a sofa. sounds a bit much doesn't it?. Well £13.50 is exactly that for most of the people who live there. Is it any suprise then that large items are dumped in back alleys. Surely there should be a free collection scheme for large items for people on low incomes?
Thanet council whilst part of the problem is not totally at fault. Our Mothers would be telling us that it is our responsiblity to pick up after ourselves. But the council should be taking a lead in these matters and frankly they have fallen behind on their promises as can be seen in the photographic evidence.
Phrases such as "tougher action" and "increasing fines" are all well and good but merely political posturing. Whatever happened to the bulky waste collection service? "with a vehicle visiting the area once a fortnight. This should reduce the dumping of bulky waste in the area, which has been a problem in the past. More resources will be targeted on clearing alleyways in the Cliftonville area."
However, it is hard not to imagine that the council doesn't spend as much on these areas as they are not "financially viable" but £20,000 can be found for hanging basket street furniture on Northdown Road that don't have hanging baskets on them. Yet funding for essential services in these areas is over looked. Does anyone on the Council believe that putting some flowers (or not ) in an area will immediately change the perception of it? Maybe putting funding into local services and facilities would work - if only Thanet council hadn't moved the focus of local services three miles out of town on an old hospital site.
Who Pays? We all Pay!
Thanet council tries to fudge these issues with lo-cost/no-solution answers to these issues -
The street monitors announced by Thanet council in a press release on the 19th of October are an excellent idea but again politcal posturing. Anyone walking down the streets of Margate monitors the levels of filth. Anyone visiting the town can immediately monitor the levels of litter in our streets. What is needed is action to do away with the need for monitoring.
It now costs taxpayers more than half a billion pounds a year to pay for street sweeping and cleaning
In the past we would recycle everything - You took your lemonade bottles back to the shop to get your 10p deposit back; you gave your milk bottles back to the milkman; the beer you drank on Saturday night came in a glass bottle that the landlord returned to the brewery who in turn recycled it by filling it back up again; The Binman picked up any rubbish that had been spilled and sometimes even took the rubbish that wasn't "household waste"; The rag and bone man collected your old fridge and cried 'you dirty old man!'. But these services have now been taken on by local government and they are making a complete mess of it. We used to recycle why is it so hard for the council to do what we all did 20 years ago?
So who is responsible for clearing up behind us?
In Sweden if you buy an aluminium can or plastic bottle of drink there is a deposit on it which can be redeemed for cash when you return it to ANY supermarket for recycling. They don't have multi million pound infrastructure changes that force you to put your yoghurt cartons out on the third full moon of the year and your paper waste out every second Walpurgis. They made business and the consumer take some responsibility for the waste that they produce.
We are all accountable for the place that we live in but the council has a statutory responsibility to clean the streets and care for where we live and Thanet Council has been less than perfect in this area.
"As practitioners we have a responsibility to ensure that people take responsibility and pride in the places and space where they live and work. But they will only do this if they see public services respond to this issue and take enforcement action against offenders who ignore requests to bin their litter." Taken from TACKLING LITTER THE MOST COMMON FORM OF ASB (anti Social Behaviour)Fact Sheet Published by the Home office.
CLEAN OUR STREETS!
