recycling collections
I've had two occasions over recent months to complain about the recycling collections. Each time I receive a reply - here is the latest received this morning 3rd July,2018:Dear Mr Brownlee,Thank you for your email below which has been received by the waste and recycling team. I apologise for the delay in responding, we are currently receiving very high volumes of correspondence. I have checked our reporting system which shows your plastics container wasn’t sorted correctly on collection day according to the crew. Could you provide me with an image of the contents inside your plastics container to determine if this was the case? I have raised a behaviour complaint against the crew under SR00654559 and they will ensure this doesn’t happen again after future collections.Kind Regards,Jonathan FowlerBusiness Support officerEnvironmental Services & Contract ManagementREDe Regeneration, Economic Development & EnvironmentLondon Borough of HounslowOffice: 020 8583 5555Mr Fowler responds reasonably quickly - five days in this case - in answer to my complaint that my red box (for plastics and metal) was rejected without explanation, and the other boxes (green, blue and food waste) are thrown back empty(together with my next door neighbours),and haphazardly on my small front garden destroying plants and new seedlings and obstructing my pathway. A total of eight boxes scattered in front of my front door, pathway and small front garden. Yes-they actually throw my neighbours boxes with my own, because they can't be bothered to separate them - even though that's not how they found them!My complaint to Mr Fowler included the following observation: "This is quite disgraceful, and demonstrates a clear contemptuous behaviour by the collectors, and a shocking disregard and disrespect to the borough's residents and their property.If the council wishes to gain willing and harmonious cooperation from the public to expedite and assist their recycling efforts, one would assume they would ensure their collectors to be equally cooperative and socially sensitive when emptying and returning the boxes."Mr Fowler now asks for a photograph of the red box.Tomorrow is a new collection day, and I will be taking photographs of my boxes from now on. It is an absurd yet seemingly necessary thing to do now. We should all take pictures of our boxes now before collection. Mr Fowler could well be inundated with them.One big question I have - which I forgot to ask Mr Fowler - is if there is an offending item in a box, why can it not be returned uncollected, without having to reject everything else? It seems like a gross jobsworth officious punishment for what can only be a minor innocent offence! Perhaps one of our eminent local counsellors can answer this, for I fear Mr Fowler has his hands full.
Paul Brownlee ● 2602d0 Comments