Green Waste, Orange Bags and Red Rubber Bands

We’d arranged this weekend for colleagues to come to East Acton to support us in some ‘listening surgeries’ knocking on doors to talk to constituents. This is something that we generally do monthly to supplement the efforts of our local team. It means that we can knock on the door of every household of the 14,500 residents of the ward about once every two years or so.

Today we visited the south-east corner of the ward – Davis Road, Elizabeth Gardens, Jeddo Road, Oldfield Road and St Elmo Road – whilst other colleagues telephoned people in other parts of the ward. This part of East Acton looks as much to Askew Road and Shepherds Bush as they do to Acton High Street and Acton – indeed the boundary with Hammersmith and Fulham weaves around within it, sometimes confusingly splitting streets between the two Boroughs. This also means that residents of ‘border roads’ have the interesting opportunity to compare the two Boroughs’ performance.

The main issues that came up were unsurprisingly environmental – problems with fly-tipping, (encouraging) praise for “the local bin men”, and a lot of enthusiasm for the expansion of recycling. Some residents preferred our ‘green box’ scheme of recycling collection, whilst others liked the Hammersmith ‘orange bag’ system. One resident of a border road (“the 49th Parallel” as another resident called it) admitted that she used both Boroughs’ systems at times depending on which suited best !

I stressed that East Acton would get the new food waste recycling (composting) service later this year. It’s being piloted by Cllr John Delaney (the relevant Cabinet Member) in his own Acton Central ward - what ‘Yes Minister’s’ Sir Humphrey would have called “ a brave and courageous decision” because John would get the very direct blame locally it if went wrong. Thankfully, the reverse is true and the pilot schemes have proved very successful with a 43% participation rate (double that expected). John is now also looking at a possible timetable for the introduction of cardboard kerbside recycling, after the food waste schemes goes Borough-wide. You can read about how the food waste recycling scheme will work when it reaches East Acton at http://www.ealing.gov.uk/services/environment/recycling/FAQs#Whycollectfoodwaste

One resident raised an interesting issue that has been annoying me – the littering of streets and paths with red rubber bands that are discarded by the Post Office when delivering letters bundled with them. He had recently been to Edinburgh, and said that the City Council there was threatening the Post Office with £50 fixed penalty fines. I said that I’d take the issue (and the Edinburgh approach) up in a question to John Delaney at the next Council meeting on 7th February.

In the evening we had a big fundraising quiz night for the Acton and Ealing Central Labour Party, with both Andy Slaughter MP and Steve Pound MP leading quiz teams. The winners (only by one point admittedly) were the East Acton team – largely because of our unashamedly nerdish knowledge of capital cities throughout the world.