We have frequently used the West London Waste centres, Townmead Road, Kew and Spaceway, Feltham. They are easy to book and no problems with the waiting queues. Before they started the booking system, the queues were dreadful. Kew used to back up and block the South Circular.From experience, I call Feltham, the tip or dump, because that is what you do. Climb up a set of stairs and tip or dump your stuff into a double height skip. Kew however is a lovely recycling site with single height skips all easy to use with the waste people keeping a close eye on what yiu are putting in the skip, and which skip you are using. They are very helpful and part of going there is asking if they take this? You hear them shouting out to stop things going in the wrong skip. One conversation I overheard was ‘I have been clearing out the back of the garage and don’t know if you take these fluids. They checked the cans, said where to put them, then when there was an unmarked can, said if you don’t know what is in it, how can we know if we take it?’.=They have a trolley at the end of each skip for electrical items, which are quickly whisked away. The latest area is for brand new or reusable quality items. This all encourages people to open those black bin sacks and sift themselves ,instead of dumping the sealed sacks in the unrecycable skip.The staff regularly go along and do some sorting of these sacks. It would be interesting the hear the stories of brand new items that people have hidden in the sacks. I saw a whole pile of musical instruments, cello ( broken neck but everything else was there including the very sound unmarked case ). Several children violins, complete with cases, and a couple of children’s guitars. I did wonder if these were fished out. I do hope so.
Sarah ● 23d