We had such good news at Council last night that I had to log on quickly and share it.

I know that James Asser, Nilufa Jahan, and a dedicated bunch of officers have been working hard behind the scenes for a considerable time now to make long overdue improvements to our recycling service, so many thanks to them for taking this forward. Like many other people in Newham, when we first moved here 17 years ago, I sent an incredulous email to the Council thinking that surely – SURELY – there was some mistake and Newham offered kerbside glass recycling?!! But, no.

Some Forest Gaters might remember the recycling trial that took place, which I wrote about here: https://forestgatenorth.com/2020/12/15/recycling-trial/ which gave officers some of the data and feedback they needed. I was, and still am, impressed to see a trial like this being run properly rather than us rushing into a new area and making mistakes. I was also very struck that even though there were some elements of the trial that could have been more difficult (warning people for putting non-recyclable waste in their bins, and in some cases even not collecting them is really necessary, but obviously hard to do), I didn’t get any complaints or confusion from residents.

And now here we are. More materials can be put in our bins soon. The date we have is ‘Mid November’ but needless to say as soon as I have anything more detailed I’ll share it.

(I should probably slightly tediously add here that recycling is vital, but reducing the amount of waste we produce is even better in terms of reducing our environmental impact. There is tonnes of information online about how to do that, but I can personally recommend composting as an easy first step. Get a subsidised bin from Newham here: https://www.newham.gov.uk/rubbish-recycling-waste/composting)