Monday 26 September 2016

The Bins of Tooting Common - The Cafe

This is the first of an occasional series on the bins of Tooting Common (just joking, one blogpost is surely enough for anyone on this subject).

Here's the cafe, and you can just make out three bins in the photo - green, yellow and red

Here's a close up of the red one, sponsored by Walls

and here's the yellow one, courtesy of Lipton

Also within throwing distance is this big bin

and these two bins - dog poo and, is it finally the recycling bin?

Nope, a general litter bin

 It may be that all rubbish collected on Tooting Common is sorted for recycling, or maybe a clause in the cafe's lease requires the managers to extract recyclable items within a 100m radius of the cafe  (in either case why not say 'waste and recycling bins').

Or maybe none of the plastic bottles, aluminium cans etc. are recycled from here at all. Maybe the litter dropped on the ground is sorted for recycling, which is why people drop it near all these bins.

Who knows? Who cares?

UPDATE
I emailed the Parks contractor for Wandsworth (Enable Leisure and Culture) yesterday and had a prompt reply:

When the last trials took place people used the recycling bins for general waste and we were unable to recycle any and all went as general waste. If the café have there own bins it is their responsibility to dispose of the waste arising from them.
There is no allowance in the Parks Maintenance contract to recycle litter waste but we do ask our contractor to do this where ever possible which is not that often because of the sorting costs involved.
When Friends Of Tooting Common conduct their litter collections they do segregate recycling and take this off of the common. 
So if you care about recycling and see a can or a bottle thrown on the ground or in a bin, please pick it up to take home to put in your domestic recycling.

Tuesday 20 September 2016

Where will you let your children cycle this car free day?


Lambeth has a car-free day with lots of events this Saturday in Cornwall Road, behind the National Theatre on Quietway 1.

As my contribution to the fun I'm asking you to imagine you live in Cornwall Road with your eleven year child. Relatives are coming to London and your child would like to cycle, without you but with a classmate, to meet them at a tourist/fun location.

Which of the following places would you a) definitely,  b) maybe, c) definitely not
let the two children cycle to? What are your reasons?

I've put together a map showing indicative routes here

1. Cutty Sark Greenwich (meeting the relatives at the far end of Quietway 1)
2. Tower of London (using the north-south then the east-west cycle superhighway)
3. Hyde Park (Belvedere Road then across Westminster Bridge to join the east-west cycle superhighway and cycle tracks through the Royal Parks)
4. The British Museum (Waterloo Bridge then following quiet roads - Bow Street. Long Acre, Drury Lane, Museum Street)
5. The Ritzy, Brixton (Baylis Road, Kennington Road, Brixton Road)
6. John Lewis, Oxford Street (Westminster Bridge, The Mall, St James' Street, Albemarle St, Bond St, Savile Row, Hanover Square)
7. Brockwell Park Lido (north-south cycle superhighway to Elephant and Castle then backstreets through Myatts Fields, Loughborough Junction, Shakespeare Road, Railton Road)
8. Westminster Boating Base (London Cycle Network 3 via Baylis and Hercules Roads to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, joining Cycle Superhighway 7 across Vauxhall Bridge, then Cycle Superhighway 8 along the Thames to end on the riverside near Pimlico Academy)