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A welcome initiative was launched last December by Hackney Borough
Services for the area north of Church Street. As part of their plan to green the borough,
they introduced a new collection of recyclable waste. A green box was deleivered to every
household with advice on how to spearate glass, paper and tin from the usual rubbish.
Residents were told there would be a collection on a designated day each fortnight.
Everything went smoothly on the first day but thereafter it all went badly
wrong. The collection date was changed and then changed back again. Two weeks later, the
collection was delayed by two days, thus confusing people. Some had taken the boxes back
indoors, some had left them outside. A letter of apology from the Council was delivered to
each house. The explanation was that the collectors' rounds were too long and could not be
completed in one day. As they were expected elsewhere on the following day, they had to
move on and leave some boxes unemptied.
Shortly afterwards, no collections at all had been carried out during the previous 4 weeks
for 500 out of the total of 5,000 households. The roads affected included Bouverie,
Grazebrook, Yoakley, Lordship Park and Queen Elizabeth's Walk.
By this time the cans, bottles and newspapers were piling up and spilling over from the
boxes. Passing dogs welcomed a more interesting target than their usual lamppost and
enjoyed themselves. The visible contents of the boxes indicated that Safeways' wine,
Foster's lager and the Guardian were the residents' favourite drinks and reading matter.
Recycling officers at the Council have promised to do better in the very near future. We
hope they are right, but wouldn't it have been better to have carried out a feasibility
study before launching the scheme?
A Big Issue
street life
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If you live or shop around Church Street, you've almost certainly seen
Gary. Thirty something with longish brown hair and a strong Bristol accent, he sells The
Big Issue. He's been doing this for the past two and a half years since he lost his job as
a labourer and was unable to pay the rent on his bed-sit. The Catch 22 for people like
Gary is that it difficult to get a job without a proper address and without work it is
impossible to find the rent for a room.
He lives alone in a squat near Clissold Park since he and his girl friend split up they
found their circumstances too difficult to keep up the relationship. Gary says that the
attitude of the public towards him has changed since he began selling the paper. At first
he was treated 'like a beggar' but after The Big Issue became well-known, people became
much more responsive. With a readership of 1,121,000, it's a best seller. Buying The Big
Issue is not a charitable gesture, it's a good magazine featuring leading personalities
from politics, sport and and entertainment. He says that Stoke Newington people are quite
generous and friendly and he prefers to work here rather than in more obviously wealthy
areas. His selling technique is simple: good eye contact, a friendly greeting and a
non-subservient manner. The price of the paper is £1.00, of which the seller receives
60p. With sales averaging 20-30 a day Gary isn't making a fortune. His worst period was
the 2-3 months after the Sun newspaper ran an article alleging that The Big Issue sellers
were earning over £100 a day. Gullible folk believed that nonsense and sales collapsed.
They have since recovered.
Gary is on the housing list run by the paper (it finds 4-5 places each fortnight) and
hopes to get a room and a job in the near future. In the meantime he'll still be around
the street keeping us aware of an issue that won't disappear, even if some people prefer
to avert their eyes.
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