The recycling bins are back for the first time since Christmas on Sheffield's Lansdowne Estate. To demonstrate why this matters, I pull on my rubber gloves and volunteer to throw away six months worth of recycling belonging to one resident who has been unable to get rid of it in all that time.
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00:00Hi, my name's Alistair from the Sheffield Star, and I'm down here on the Lansdowne Estate
00:09again where, for the first time in six months, there are mixed recycling bins on site. You
00:13may have been following my stories in the past where I've been talking about fly-tipping
00:16and other issues here on the estate, and one of those is how there's been no recycling
00:19bins here since about Christmas time. But, true to the word the other day, the City Council
00:23on June 10th did bring by these new green mixed recycling bins. When the Council emailed
00:27me about this one, they insisted that these bins are in addition to the existing recycling
00:32services that have been here on site, and in fact they have been mixed recycling bins
00:35here since Christmas this entire time. I'm here to challenge that point because I've
00:39been doing stories here on the Lansdowne Estate for several months now, and in all that time
00:43I've never seen anything other than these blue recycling bins here. I've never seen
00:47any of these mixed ones. And to help my case, I volunteered to throw these away. These are
00:51the mixed recycling bags from one resident here on Lansdowne Estate who, without a car
00:55and able to go to the mixed recycling centre, and with no bins to put them in, has had no
00:59choice but to pile them up inside their balcony for the past seven months. That's right, what
01:03you see here is seven months worth of recycling belonging to one resident who is off camera
01:08right now, is slightly camera shy and doesn't want to be seen, but I volunteered to throw
01:13the recycling out for them to show you just how much the recycling has piled up in that
01:16time and to prove there have been no recycling bins on site here since Christmas time. Are
01:20you sure you don't want to help? It's okay, they're camera shy, it's fine.
01:37Yeah, so that was seven months of mixed recycling from one of the residents here
01:41at Lansdowne who very kindly allowed me to throw those away, wearing gloves of course.
01:46You might be wondering why I did this. This was kind of ridiculous in its own way, but
01:49I maintain it was as a point. The Lansdowne Estates down here have hundreds and hundreds
01:54of residents, hundreds of flats certainly, and all of those have their own waste and recycling
01:58needs. Beyond the issues we've been having with the bin chutes that have been piling up that I've
02:02been reporting on for several months now, another issue is just that in all that time, no mixed
02:06recycling on site, leaving all the people to sort of make it their own way on that one. If you don't
02:11have a friend or a family member who can drive you to the waste recycling centre, you don't really
02:15have an option other than to either throw it in the main waste area or let it pile up in your flat
02:21somewhere waiting for moments like this. I mean everyone here has a balcony, maybe they were
02:25putting it on there, I haven't really asked them where they were keeping it in all this time.
02:28And beyond that, it's all well and good that this mixed recycling bin is back now, but
02:33this is a single bin for glass cans and plastic. And as far as I can tell, each of these bins is
02:40all across the estate, one of these bins has arrived. It's one of these to every block basically,
02:45which contain hundreds of residents at a time. Once again the council and the email me insisted
02:49that this was in addition to the provision that was provided and in addition to existing glass
02:54can and plastic recycling. But no, I've been reporting on the estate here for months now
02:58and there's been nothing but these blue bins here since Christmas time. This is not in addition to
03:04other bins that were here. This is all there has been in that meantime and these have arrived now.
03:09I'm there to serve all these flat blocks all at once. So it's almost taken six months to bring
03:15one mixed recycling bin here for all of these blocks, but I still don't foresee that being
03:20enough of a provision to provide for the recycling of all of these residents essentially. We'll let
03:26it play out I suppose. It's possible that they get emptied once a day and the recycling need is not
03:31that great compared to the domestic waste provision that needs to take care of. But we'll see in due
03:37course and get in touch with the city council as it happens. That's all done for the meantime now
03:41then. I know I've been wearing gloves this whole time, but I really need to go wash my hands now.
03:45I feel kind of gross, but thank you for joining me on this ridiculous expedition.