I keep seeing these adverts for recycling on TV, with cute cartoons and quirky "alternative" comedian voiceovers exhorting us to recycle with the slogan: "Recycle – the possibilities are endless”, but I’ve got to say, here in Balsall Heath, the opportunities are limited.
 | | My recycling |
I’ve just been on the government website to check and although I do apparently have recycling facilities for glass and cans within a mile of my house, they are in separate locations and I’ve never noticed them. Therapeutic smashing I’ve grown up knowing all about recycling and how important it is, so I generally end up collecting loads of cans and bottles in bags outside my back door until I can be bothered to take them somewhere. Admittedly smashing glass inside bottle banks is curiously therapeutic in a destructive manner, but I’d really rather not have to lug it all to the recycling centre in the first place. But I do, because the facts speak for themselves: (from http://www.recyclenow.com/) • On average, every person in the UK throws away their own body weight in rubbish every 7 weeks • Recycling aluminium requires only 5% of the energy it takes to make new aluminium – and produces only 5% of the CO2 emissions, and producing steel from recycled material saves 75% of the energy needed for steel made from virgin material
 | | Stupid green bags |
Given these facts, there can be no arguments against recycling cans and bottles then? Surely the local and national government should be encouraging us to recycle this large proportion of household rubbish as part of the general waste management plan? But no. Birmingham City Council collects recycling twice a week, of paper - which is good, and green / garden waste - which is pretty useless round here. I mean – how many households in Balsall Heath actually have any kind of a garden to recycle waste from? And surely it would be better for those who are gardeners to just home compost their waste and save money on compost? So why do I keep getting rolls of green garden bags and shiny leaflets telling me about a recycling service I will probably never use? Brumcan
 | | Brumcan at work |
We used to have a doorstep collection every week for glass and cans, run by Brumcan, a local charity, who collected from 20,000 homes in the city. Admitted the boxes that they supplied for us to put out our appropriate waste in quite often got pinched off the streets around here by aspiring DJs as they were exactly the right size and shape for storing 12” vinyl in, but still – it was a good thing, knowing that you could put your cans and bottles out each week and reduce the waste going into landfill while simultaneously helping a local charity employ people doing a worthwhile job. All that changed in July 2005 when we were unceremoniously informed that the service was to cease. Apparently it had been mostly funded by the European Regional Development Fund, and this source had run dry. There was still the Neighbourhood Renewal Funding (NRF) potentially available to keep the service running but this was supposed to be spent on projects dealing with crime, education, health and "the environment”, yet somehow recycling didn’t count in this instance. I’ve tried to work out what progress has been made since then but I can’t. Friends of the Earth (co-founders of Brumcan) are trying to put pressure on the Council with a petition demanding a better service, but the Council do not seem to have responded yet. Last night, on the way back from the pub, I realised from all the boxes out on the streets that the scheme is still running in Moseley – which is literally across the road from me. So when I got home, I carried all 12 bags full of glass and cans that I had accumulated over the months since Christmas across the road into the next postcode, and then this morning I watched as the excellent people of Brumcan sorted it all out into their environmentally-friendly recycling cart. Recycling point
 | | BH residents still put recycling out |
I’ve had a good look today at where my nearest recycling points are, and I suppose I could take my stuff to the nearest combined facilities place at the St Paul’s Trust Farm in central Balsall Heath where according to their website: “Local residents bring in paper, cans and glass bottles to bins at the Farm (open 9am to 3.30pm, 7 days a week)”. But to be honest, I think I’ll just keep nipping over the road every Wednesday night until the Council works its priorities out and reinstates this service to my actual doorstep. Meanwhile I’ll be trying to think of interesting things to do with all these rolls of green plastic bags that I have no garden waste to put in, as the bin men won’t accept them as general rubbish sacks. Shame the snow has gone; I could’ve used them to go sledging. | 
