Rubbish Service Coming to your Borough

Thousands of Camden residents are furious at their council’s cutbacks to rubbish collection services but there is one clear winner from the controversial shift to fortnightly collections.

Camden Bins, a business that was launched to fill the new gaps in the council’s garbage service, is booming and faces increasing demand over the summer. The firm’s success could be a forerunner of the future of waste collection around London, as other boroughs are closely watching the Labour-run council’s cutbacks to see if they should adopt the same approach.

Cousins James and George Curley, of Kilburn, started Camden Bins after the council’s decision late last year to reduce collections of non-recyclable waste in the north of the borough was met with outrage among residents. While critics claim the move represents a “stealth privatisation” of traditional council services, customers of Camden Bins say it provides a reliable alternative to shoddy council services.

The firm’s subscription service works in tandem with the council, with prices ranging from £27 to £78 a month. “We have seen a renewed interest over the summer months,” George Curley told Felix. “The mood we see among Camden residents has become even angrier, as they are now seeing the effects of the policy, rather than the theoretical problems.”

Spreading across London

Camden Borough rolled out the controversial new scheme in April, reducing collections of non-recyclable waste to a fortnightly service in a bid to encourage more recycling.  High profile residents of neighbourhoods including Highgate, Hampstead and Belsize were in uproar, fearing that there would be teetering piles of vermin-infested rubbish accumulating on their driveways.

Soon after the cutbacks Veolia, the French company that runs Camden’s environment services, was reportedly receiving up to 3000 phone calls a day from residents complaining that their streets had been transformed into “landfill sites”.  Councillor Meric Apak defended the reduction in collections, saying that the scheme was projected to save the borough £5 million a year.  He dismissed accusations that Camden had instigated a class war by aiming the cuts at the borough’s wealthiest areas such as Swiss Cottage and West Hampstead, while protecting weekly services in most of Holborn and Covent Garden, King’s Cross and St Pancras and Somers Town.

Continued cuts to local government spending and pressure on London’s boroughs to become more eco-friendly mean that similar cuts are likely to spread across the capital. Veolia now operates environment services in 13 London boroughs, having recently won contracts with the boroughs of Sutton, Merton, Kingston and Croydon.  Its contract with Camden aims to reduce the amount of waste that residents send to landfill and runs alongside a rewards scheme provided by Local Green Points, which encourages individuals and constituencies to increase the amount they recycle.  While residents are glad to back green policies in theory, the shambolic situation in Camden shows that the reality of these measures can be harder to swallow.

London lags behind the rest of the UK when it comes to recycling rates, which have flat-lined in recent years. The London Assembly has begun its own investigation into the amount of waste Londoners generate, with a report of its findings due to be released in early 2018.  Leonie Cooper, the chair of the assembly’s environment committee, said the committee “will hear from the Greater London Authority, the London Waste & Recycling Board, local government and many other businesses and organisations about what can be done to start making progress on waste again.”

Pioneering services such as those introduced in Camden will be closely scrutinised by the committee as London is dragged – perhaps kicking and screaming – towards a greener future.

by Poppy Cosyns

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