Local Blog: Daily Mail rubbishes Bracknell and Wokingham's bin spies

I'm always amazed at how upset the Daily Mail gets about the subject of rubbish. It would appear however that there is an element of truth to their story on council race spies secretly rummage through rubbish bins to discover families' habits see here.

I'm really not sure why the Daily Mail thinks this is about race as claimed in the article 'Often, officials deliberately picked streets where different types of men and women lived to see if their ethnic origins, type of home or wealth affected the amount or rubbish they threw out'. I doubt this is even possible in Bracknell.

Bracknell council have admitted that they do employ companies who will empty some bins from a random location into a separate white van to find out if that area is recycling or not. They then send leaflets to that area. the council do claim that they are not spies and that no profiling is conducted of individuals or households. Still it must be tempting after all if you know where the bin came from you may know who throw the rubbish away incorrectly.

The same article also claims that 'Officials in Wokingham, Berkshire, went through the bins of almost 500 homes, identifying almost a ton of rubbish that could have been recycled'.

There are people going through the bins in both Bracknell and Wokingham. If this is not about profiling and includes helpful leaflets to given areas than I don't see a problem with it. But I would not want someone to know that I have thrown away something personal or any ID or data and to of know where it came from.

So if you do have anything that contains important data I would not throw it away in your local bins but have it shredded before hand.

See the Get Bracknell story
http://www.getbracknell.co.uk/news/s/2075306_council_staff_are_rummaging_through_your_bins

Bracknell’s Beautiful Parks and the Litter!

Over the last few years I have been walking, running and cycling around and through Bracknell. One thing that has really struck me is how good the parks in Bracknell are.

Bracknell is unfortunately far from perfect but it does have new town planning to thank for the green spaces, parks and pedestrian paths and cycle ways in every estate. One of my favourite routes is along the paths between Lily Hill Park and Coral Reef. Its goes through the back of Harmans Water estate, then through Forest Park estate over a bridge (A322) then continues beside coral reef and the outlook. This path is wide and does not follow any major roads.

At one end you have Lily Hill Park, which has Bracknell Rugby club, specimen trees gathered from around the world and Lily Hill House. Lily Hill parks restoration is also a testimony to what can be done by community groups, council and lottery funding. At the other end your find the Outlook which is very popular and well worth a visit.

The only thing really spoiling the Parks is all the rubbish. How can this be changed, everywhere I run there is rubbish. Fast food from Saturday night, Cans of Special Brew, Magazines and Papers. Why do so many people just not care?

I believe this a cultural thing for some akin to getting wasted every Friday and Saturday night, this needs to change! Plenty of people do take their rubbish home, but plenty just can’t be bothered. It’s also very easy to throw rubbish from cars and litter the foliage beside the roads and paths.

So what can we do? Bracknell could follow Maidenheads example of zero tolerance on litter, introducing litter wardens who charge fines for dropping litter (£75) and their Adopt-a-Street policy that I believe could be expanded to Adopt-a-Park where residents have regular street cleans.

I will be doing more some research in this area and I will blog again on this once I have enough information to see what action can be taken.

Info On Bracknells Parks
http://www.bracknell-forest.gov.uk/leisure/leis-parks-and-countryside.htm

Maidenheads zero tolerance litter scheme
http://www.rbwm.gov.uk/web/sdop_littering.htm

Keep Britain Tidy Campaign
http://www.thebigtidyup.org/