What’s happening with our bins?
In recent weeks, residents across Glasgow have been complaining about rising rubbish levels, with bins not being collected for several weeks.
Photo by Michael Paley
By Jack Howse
“There have been a few times when rubbish in the bike lanes got stuck in my tyre and jammed my bike”. Simon Cullen, a local resident, who works as a courier, said that the amount of waste had noticeably increased over the last couple of months and that it was affecting their work.
“Whenever I have emailed the council about overflowing bins in my close they have told me that I can take it the recycling centre. But most of us in Govanhill don’t have access to a car” said local resident, Kiran.
Some residents have reported that their recycling has not been collected since before the festive period. When asked about this, a spokesperson for Glasgow City Council told us:
“There are addresses in Govanhill which unfortunately were due to receive collections on either December 25 or 26 or January 1 or 2, when the cleansing service shut down for the festive holidays.
“Due to the way the cycle of collections landed on the calendar some addresses may not have received a collection on either weekend. We always aim to catch-up on collections at affected addresses as quickly as possible.
“Over the festive period we have also been experiencing high levels of absence due to general illness, COVID cases and annual leave, which has led to delays in collections in places across the city as a whole. Also households do generate more waste than normal over the festive period and that takes longer to process than usual.”
Read more: Tackling Rubbish: Different Approaches From Around the World
Simplifying the messaging
A further problem with rubbish stems from lack of clarity around refuse . Whilst the onus to rectify the city-wide problem lies on the shoulders of Glasgow City Council, Thriving Places Govanhill have created and shared a poster with simple clear instructions in multiple language with accompanying images.
Speaking about how it came about, Marzanna Antoniak, Community Connector at Thriving Places Govanhill said it was an idea developed by a group of tenants, who produced the first version of the resource: “I saw it could be simplified and that it would benefit from text in different languages so we designed a new resource using the photographs from the previous one with translations by our volunteers.”
