Emirates Stadium recycling pick

On Saturday 28th October, Islington Friends of the Earth, along with Islington Timebank, set out to pick up litter around the new Emirates Stadium whilst Arsenal were playing at home inside.

During the ninety minutes of the game we were able to collect 17.8 kg of glass and plastic bottles, and drinks cans. At the end of the day we delivered our collection to the recycling centre on Caledonian Road.

Our action highlighted two things:
First, the lack of recycling facilities for spectators at the Emirates stadium. All the rubbish the fans threw away would go to landfill or incineration.

Secondly, the dire need for street litter to be recycled. At the moment in Islington whilst there are plenty of litter bins there are very few places in the street for the public to deposit items for recycling. Equally whilst the street cleaners do an excellent job clearing up - at our recycling pick we found ourselves running behind them to keep up - all the stuff they sweep up gets thrown into landfill or incinerated.

Islington council is planning a zero waste strategy. For this to succeed, the Emirates stadium must be required to have recycling facilities and the council needs to ensure that there are facilities to recycle street litter.

For more on our recycling pick, click on the link below to watch a short movie filmed by Islington Friends of the Earth and Timebank member, Kirsty Burns:

Where does Islington's recyclable material go?

In a nutshell Grosvenor Waste. Islington Council and six other North London boroughs manage its waste disposal and recycling activities throgh the North London Waste Authority. In turn the NLWA has contracts with London Waste who handle non recyclable waste and composting and Grosvenor Waste who handle the contents of the green boxes.

The contents of the green boxes is mechanically sorted at the Materials Recyling Facility at Crayford by passing the waste through rotating drums etc. A lot but not all of the recyclable material can be easily extracted. The residual waste has to be landfilled or incinerated. However in some high profile news stories covered by the BBC and the Guardian, some of this waste has turned up in Indonesia and China.

Of course it would be much better to get householders to sort all waste into separate bins and collect separately. And this used to happen in Islington up to a couple of years ago. Contamination of the recycled materials such as the glass is much lower and the glass fetches a better price. The problem is that Inner London boroughs like Islington and Hackney have previously struggled to get their recycling rates up to the same level as the middle class boroughs like Barnet and the argument is that it is better to have an easier system that encourages higher participation. Their is another reason; the UK government is obliged to reach recycling levels determined by the EU. Unfortunately the emphasis is on the weight of waste collected rather than the energy recovered or the quality of the recycled material.

From our point of as residents, the best tip is to avoid packaging materials and when you have to buy packaged items, select items that are wrapped with packaging that Grosvenor Waste can handle. Cardboard, card and paper and good; most plastics are bad because they cannot be distinguished from one another. Compound materials like plastic welded onto cardboard, used in tetrapaks cannot be recycled by Grosvenor Waste; there are alternatives.

Islington Council provides a limited amount of information about their green box scheme. We have asked the Council to set up an email list so that residents can keep in touch with developments about their recycling service. However they do not think this would be worthwhile as many residents do not have internet access would be excluded.

Things do change and do email me if you think any of this is now out of date or wrong.

P.S. The NLWA has set up the North London Recycling Forum which is a network of council officers, and organisations and small businesses offering recycling solutions.

Our M.P.s back Climate Bill but...

Emily Thornberry, M.P. for Islington South, is a sponsor of a Climate Change bill, originally drafted by Friends of the Earth, requires the government to make year on year carbon dioxide emissions reductions totaling 60% by 2050. Emily recently met with David Miliband (Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and Jeremy Corbyn, M.P. for Islington North has also written to the government in strong support of the bill.

After three weeks of party conferences at which climate change has been given top priority, you would think the Government would be feeling the pressure to make things happen. Not at all. Neither of our Labour M.P.s has managed to move our intransigent government a single jot.

Friends of the Earth BigAsk.BigMonth.BigLobby