Trial of bin provision for paper and card recycling rather than sacks delayed until September 2024

 

In October Brent Council will be introducing changes in its waste and recycling collection. This will include providing each eligible household with a sack for paper and card collection. During the trial there were complaints that the sacks were not robust enough. As a consequence the December 2022 Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee recommended Brent Council undertake a feasibility study on the potential for introducing a mixed approach to paper/card recycling collections, to explore whether any recycling collection rounds in the borough would be more suited to the use of bins rather than sacks.

 

The Council’s response (below) indicates that any such trial will only take place after the new scheme has been operating for almost a year and will only take place if that operation is unsuccessful. It also refers to the potential impact of the bottle Deposit Return Scheme to be introduced by October 2025.

 

 

Veolia will introduce a 1 year wheelie bin trial for around 6,000 street level households in total, divided into the five Brent Connect Areas, to start in September 2024. Veolia’s feasibility study did not enable them to accurately calculate the split between those properties that could receive an additional wheeled bin for paper/card and those that could only accommodate a reusable sack. Veolia concluded from their study that to minimise disruption to households and to measure the impact of introducing a wheeled bin for the
paper/card stream, a trial should take place. The rationale for the timing of the trial in September 2024 is summarised below:

· Allows for the introduction of the alternate weekly twin stream dry recycling collection service to fully settle down

 
· May reduce the impact of contamination from introducing wheeled bins as residents would have been segregating streams for a year allowing a more robust comparison of the data from the trial

 

· It could be the case that after a year, if the reusable sack is proven to be working and successful, then the bin trial wouldn’t be needed, resulting in cost savings for the Council

 
· Allows a full 12 month period of data for the new service, including seasonal variations relating to volume, participation and contamination

 
· Allows time for any legislation changes to be accounted for – the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) for beverage containers will be introduced in England by October 2025. Drinks containers made from PET plastic, steel and aluminium cans are covered by DRS. This could lead to a migration of some volume of material streams away from the kerbside to the DRS. This migration could open up a number of possibilities for the Contract including but not limited to; switching streams for the paper/card sack and container mix wheeled bins, and downsizing residual bins and using existing residual bins for paper/card etc. Whilst this could be done earlier, undertaking these changes once the impact of DRS is known would be beneficial, this would include limiting the number of containerisation changes undertaken during the contract period.

 
· Allows for a significant period of time for the Council’s ECO team to carry out targeted communication, education and enforcement with those residents not using the service or not using the service correctly e.g. contamination etc.

 
· If the trial was to take place sooner, e.g. March 2024, a further disadvantage is that the planning for the rollout of the trial would take place during the mobilisation period for the new alternate weekly collection service, which would significantly add to the workload of Council staff and the Veolia Contract Management Team which could take the focus away from the key objectives of the new contract and services.

Will Brent Council Council's vital services to residents be improved by these proposals going to Cabinet on Monday?

 

A process with major repercussions for the future of basic services provided to residents and worth millions of pounds will be discussed at Brent Cabinet on Monday.

Brent Council synchronised the end dates of various Public Realm contracts so as to enable the Council to consider ways of Redefining Local Services (RSL). Of the contracts above the Veolia contract is the most costly.

Following an initial consultation over the provision of local servives the Council proposes to adopt a 'specialist contracts delivery model with low to moderate levels of insourcing [the council providing the service rather than external contractors].' 

This is a lower level of insourcing that some Labour councillors hoped for. Insourcing would involve TUPE from existing providers.

 The objectives of RSL are listed:

The Final RLS Delivery Model will aim to achieve the following overarching objectives: 

 
· A neighbourhood approach to managing local issues to meet the needs of local areas
· A borough-wide approach to managing our assets and infrastructure (e.g. highways, street lighting) to ensure investment is spent well
· A specialist contracts approach for outsourced services
· Improved contract management and monitoring for contracted services
· An intelligence-led approach to the deployment of resources
· Integrated deployment of environmental enforcement services across public realm
· Greater responsiveness to addressing issues and problems in the public realm
· Better digital customer interface with real-time information and issue reporting
· Additional council capacity for continuous service improvement and innovation
· Focusing specialist officers where they can add the greatest value, with more triaging between generalist and specialist roles
· Deliver improved Social Value outcomes via our Social and Ethical Procurement Policy, including: striving for carbon neutrality by 2030 and enhancing nature and biodiversity; the number of local jobs created (where appropriate for the contract), including focus on disadvantaged groups; and the number of SMEs and third sector organisations that benefit from the procurement exercises.

 The service benefits are set out:

The Final RLS Delivery Model offers the following service benefits:

· Ongoing funding for the highways reactive maintenance gang based at the Depot, tasked with 20% of reactive highways repairs which arise from customer reports, in order to provide a more flexible and responsive service than the current highways services contract. No additional cost as this has already been funded from within R & E budgets). 

· Insourcing the Education, Communication and Outreach (ECO) team (6 staff) would give the Council direct responsibility for communication, education and outreach to help address our considerable waste, climate emergency and circular economy objectives and challenges. 3 of these staff are already on LGPS with the additional cost of insourcing estimated at £52k per annum. 

· Insourcing the Head Park Warden and 4 Park Wardens would enable better integration of education and enforcement across the whole public realm in Brent. It would also enable a more strategic and holistic approach to stakeholder management and community engagement of park interest groups and park users and help to increase participation and volunteering in parks. All these staff are on existing LGPS via an Admission Agreement with the Council but there would be additional cost estimated at £26k per annum to cover Brent’s higher employers’ pension contribution (35% compared to Veolia’s 20%). 

· The Pre-Notice to Owner (NTO) Correspondence work-stream (informal parking appeals) could be incorporated back into the larger Parking back-office Notice Processing Team (formal parking appeals). The addition of these two individuals would be absorbed within the structure without any need to change either structure or management capacity. The additional cost of insourcing is estimated at £32k per annum. There has historically been discomfort that outsourcing this function results in a situation where the contractor is in effect "marking its own homework” as it is issuing the PCNs and then answering the challenges to those same PCNs. Moving this service back in house could provide: 

‒ Greater transparency on the activities of the contractor
‒ More control on how policy is applied to the cancellation of PCNs
‒ Improved quality of Pre-NTO correspondence
‒ Greater consistency between Pre and Post NTO communications with
customers
‒ Greater flexibility across the wider PCN correspondence team to deal with
surges in workload 

· In-sourcing the Tree Surveying function, tree database and the raising of
tree works orders would provide the Council with greater strategic and
financial control of the Arboriculture Services contract, improved planning
and completion of works and achieve better value for money from our tree
maintenance budget. This is estimated to cost an additional £30k per
annum, comprising £20k in staff costs and up to £10k in annual tree
database license costs. Staff time required to maintain the database would
be covered from existing resources, and/or as an element of the TUPE
transfer to the Council of the existing surveyor post. 

· Creating a stronger highways inspection regime - 1 additional highways
inspector post would significantly address the lack of resource for highways
inspections noted in section 4 of this report. Total cost £43k per annum.

 

Street cleaning, litter, fly-tipping, waste collection and recycling are one of the main concerns of residents so dealt with in my detail here.

One of the proposals is for an 'Integrated Street Cleaning and Waste Contract' that combines street cleansing and waste collection but separates waste collection from recycling. A discussion with potential providers was in favour of such a separation. The Cabinet paper outlines the main requirements:

Street Cleansing Services 

 
· Provide comprehensive, seven-day cleansing services that deliver high performance standards across all land use types and which maximise the amount of waste segregated for reuse, recycling, composting and recovery
· Provide a ‘Clear All’ service on designated roads ensuring the removal of all waste in these areas, regardless of the source material
· Provide and manage receptacles, including litter bins, ensuring that they never become full or overflowing
· Provide a fly tipping removal service which proactively reduced the amount of fly tipped waste and delivers the highest possible performance standards
· Provide a graffiti and fly posting removal service that meets EPA standards

 

 Waste and Recycling Collections 

 
· Provide a scheduled residual, recycled, food and garden waste collection service that maximises the amount of waste segregated for reuse, recycling and composting, while minimising contamination of target materials to improve the quality of the separately collected waste streams
· Provide an assisted collection service to meet the needs of those households who are unable to present household waste and recyclables at standard collection points
· Provide a special collections service for bulky household waste that maximises the amount of waste segregated for reuse, recycling and recovery

 

Winter Maintenance 

 
· Provide an effective winter service which ensures that safe passage along all main highways, priority routes and other relevant land use types is not endangered by ice and/or snow during the designated Winter Service Period
· Provide and manage all salt bins, ensuring that they are stocked and available for use during the designated Winter Service Period to reduce risk to residents

Other Services 

 
· Emergency and out of hours response
· Waste container management and delivery
· Customer care and satisfaction, including response to service requests and complaints.

The potential for further insourcing in the future is noted:

Under the Final RLS Delivery Model, there would be potential to insource further functions from the proposed Integrated Street Cleansing & Waste Contract during the main contract term, as detailed in paragraph 6.12 of this report, and to insource the full grounds maintenance service after the next contract ends in 2027/28, should the council’s finances improve. There was broad support for such further insourcing in the best value duty consultation response.The council would also retain an interest in considering insourcing the full street cleansing service at the end of the main contract term of the proposed Integrated Street Cleansing & Waste contract

The Timetable:

The full report can be found HERE

Housing, waste & road repairs lag in Brent Council performance

Brent Council's Cabinet will receive data on the Council's performance at its meeting on Monday March 11th. Performance is recorded as a RAG (Red, Amber & Green) rating, often known as the traffic light system, according to performance against targets.

The report includes comments on the reasons for good or poor performance. The majority of ratings are Green or Amber but discussion centres on the Red areas and the action officers are taking to improve performance.

Some of the stand-out Red items are (target in brackets):

Proportion of waste recycled (Year to date) which is up to Quarter 3): 38% (45%) In 2016-17 the London average was 33% with Brent at 36.4%. Bexley was top at 52.1% and Newham bottom at 14.1%.

Residual waste collected (YTD): 51,283 tonnes (49.489). The more residual waste collected and the lower amount recycled increases the Council's landfill costs.

Timeliness of repair of highways defects(YTD): 56% (98%) See notes on document below.

Times taken to re-let empty council homes with minor defects to be addressed (YTD): 39.1 days (24)

Time taken to re-let council homes with major defects to be addressed (YTD): 90.4 days (76)

Tenants' satisfaction with council housing repairs (YTD): 75.6% (82%)

Waste and highway repairs are both out-sourced, Council housing has been brought back in-house but repairs are contracted out.

Click on bottom right square to enlarge

Barnet Unison launch great recycling video and song

Councillor claims residents will flytip and report via Cleaner Brent App to avoid £35 bulk collection charge

Councillor John Duffy (Labour, Kilburn) has returned to the theme of alleged waste in Brent Council's waste policy. He has sent the email below to all councillors:

Dear Councillors,

It is obvious to anyone who understand data there is a direct correlation between the failure of the Cabinet to monitor the bulky waste service and ensure the contractor perform to contract specifications and the increase in fly-tipping.

It is unacceptable that the cabinet were aware of the both the rising fly-tipping figures and the rising delays in the bulky waste collection Times and chose to do nothing. It is clear  to me the longer the waiting time for the bulky waste service the more likely the waste is to be dumped on the Street. It is also clear residents are resourceful and using the Cleaner Brent  App to report their own dumped furniture/waste (therefore the rise in reported dumping) therefore getting the waste taken away for nothing in 24 Hrs rather than wait the 8 weeks for a collection.

The likelihood of thing improving once the £35 charge has been introduced is remote and clutching at straws, especially  as residents will soon realise they have already paid for the collection service once in their Council Tax.

It beggars belief that  the cabinet are offering our residents the choice of paying £35 for  bulky collection that will take  up to 5 days too collect or to take the items  outside and use the Brent Appto report the dumping and get it picked up in 24 hrs  for Free. I think many will chose the second option especially when they realise  they have already paid for the service in their council tax.

I believe the service will yield little income and will increase fly-tipping, I have asked the CEO on Monday to suspend the charge and asked for a full evaluation.The CEO has not got back to me, but I understand her and the leader will not suspend the £35 charge and stand by it.

I am having further conversations with residents groups to put together a package of improvements based on environmental needs. Which I will hopefully update you with on Monday.

One of the guiding philosophies in the environment is the polluter pays, however what the cabinet are suggesting is the polluter pays twice.

I still hope the cabinet will see reason and enter into dialogue to improve the environment and suspend the £35 charge, however based on my previous experience that will not happen. 

See below email

Dear CEO and All Councillors ,

I am very concerned about the £35 charge for Bulky Waste as I believe the decision is double charging residents for a service they already pay for and has no financially modelling and is environmentally damaging and is not also sustainable,

The reason I believe this is the case because the charge is being brought in to hide the failings by the cabinet to improve services. The service has gone from a 5 day pick-up in 2014 when I (most of us) was elected to an 8 week delay today. The delay is wholly at the doorstep of the cabinet for believing in the supposed Zero Tolerance policy with Kingdom Security , which squandered resources, while misunderstanding the issues around contract compliance and sustainability.

As well as the wasting of resources on the KS contract one of the only environmentally revenue (we lost over £100k) from the government, that was available to us. The contract had no controls on what services were needed by the council. This allowed the contractor to chose the most lucrative areas for themselves , while avoided the areas of most need like street dumping .This lack of controls and other decisions taken by the cabinet has seen the number of case of fly tipping go up by over 32% from10,000 reported cases  to 17,000 reported cases in the last year alone.

I am therefore amazed with Fly-tipping rising at constant rate over the last 3 years ,the cabinet have decided  the best way to reduce fly-tipping is to introduce a £35 charge for the bulky waste service.

The Service

The truth about the existing service is the Street Cleansing contract is clear . The contract makes the contractor ( Veolia) liable to pick up 17500 bulky waste collections PA 70 pick-ups X 5 Days X 50 Weeks. This year we picked up 17485 collections. Albeit the service clearly running at near capacity, it should not have lead to an eight weeks delay….. It would seem that the residents have already paid for this service via the council Tax for the street cleansing contract and the disposal contract, but the cabinet failure to ensure contract compliance and Fly-tipping as their priorities have let the service fail.

Financial Modelling.

Albeit the service has been paid for once. I believe there is a case for more investment in the environmental services. However I believe the £35 charge will be the highest charge by any licensed waste carrier in Brent and is not competitive and the charge will have a negative affect on the environment .Those who will not pay the £35 will do one of the following.

(i)        Some will taken Civic Amenity centre , some residents will still have a problem transporting larger item,settee,mattresses.

(ii)       Some will use licensed private collectors.

(iii)      Some will use the grey bin ( breaking-up smaller items)

(iv)      Some will use Street dumping

(v)       Some will  use Street Dumping and use the Brent Cleansing Apt to report it.  

(vI)     Some will use unlicensed (White Van Man) waste carriers , much of which will end -up dumped on the street.

Model A 

I understand officers have based their modelling on a take-up from 11000 to 17000 collections and income between 25k to £250 , this seemingly is only based on a £35 per collections price. Their model excludes the collection of bags of rubble and some other items and the figures are very broad.

Whereas it is always hard to a financial breakdown  on what is a new charge, but there are obvious facts ,the service will still operate a substantial discount for residents in receipt of benefits  which can be as high as 20% so allowing for a 15% against what is in the contract 17500- 15% = 14875  paid collection. we also know the higher the cost the bigger the lose of customers.

I believe that a nominal fee of £10 should have little affect on paying on the people who pay now but the £35 will deter many my analyses is based on work I did some years ago on increasing costs for commercial Waste.

£10 cost Customers  lose 10% of customers   =  14131 X   £10 = £141000  (90% of customers including discounted residents)  

£20 cost Customers  lose 45% of customers   =    8181 X   £20 = £164000  (70% of customers including discounted residents)  

£35 cost Customers  lose 75% of customers   =    4462  X  £35 = £156180  (45% of customers including discounted residents)  

You can see from this model the £20 would bring in the most. The £35 is unsustainable because its more expensive that other options, however the £10 is more fair as the residents have already paid for collections in the Veolia contract and already paid for the deposal in the West -Waste levy. I also have more confident in the take -up of the £10 cost as its affordability for most residents.

There also other issues, why are we using 5 items as the cut of point , it is more logical to me to cut it to £10 for 4 items this is based on the bulky collection usually being one or two items (bed and mattress or a fridge-freezer) we could then charge a progression cost for £5 per item after that , believe this would also bring in more income.

Officers and the Cabinet say they oppose a progressive charge because they wish to keep the costing simple. I completely disagree there is nothing simple about doubling the price once you have past a threshold. A progressive charge is both fairer and reflects the true cost.

The Way forward

As you know I am trying to get the support of a number of councillors (hopefully in late November) to call a full council meeting  to discuss sustainable Environment policies around enforcement , recycling and  street cleansing. I will get back to you on those proposal shortly.

In the meantime I am asking the CEO and the Leader of the Council to consider

(1)      Freezing the introduction of the scheme until a full evaluation of the increase in fly-tipping is assessed.

If however you are not willing to freeze the introduction of the charge please answer the questions below as an FOI if you like.

(2)      Explain the price modelling. 

(3)      Explain why,now that we are charging, why are certain wastes prohibited 

(4)      Did  officers explore progressive pricing. 

(5)      How much increased revenue do you expect to received from the the new charge of £35 

(6)      What impact do you think the Charge will have on Fly-tipping. 

I understand under this scheme Brent are going to takeaway old Christmas Trees.I buy my Tree at Ikea for £16 , I feel hearten to know the council will take it away for just…...£35.

I think the cabinet have missed the point.

Cut Tory education policy waste - not school funding

With education in the news over the weekend as the teaching unions meet I was interested in this information from Janes Eades of Wandsworth NUT and CASE (Campaign for the Advancement of State Education).
 

Much has been in the news about the cuts which will be taking place in schools, forcing many schools to cut staffing.  However, there has been virtually no coverage of the waste of money as a direct result of the implementation of the Government policy of opening 'free' schools, UTCs and studio schools, combined with the conversion of schools into academies, controlled by trusts which are often not up to the job or which are financially irresponsible.

The NUT/ATL have put together information on how different parts of the country will be affected and this can be seen on the School Cuts website.

However, I have looked at ways in which the Government have been wasting millions:

Is Brent Green Bin Tax a success?

Brent Scrutiny Committee will tonight discuss a report on the charge for Green Bin collections. In this guest blog Rik Smith considers the claims made in the report.
 

Since March 2015, Brent council introduced a £40 charge for households to have “green waste” collected regularly (ish) - before this point, most households had a green wheely bin which was collected weekly.

The Brent Scrutiny Committee agreed to review the impact of the changes to the “Garden Waste Service” (or known as the Green Bin tax by most residents) after 9 months of operation.

The green bin tax was anticipated to achieve the following outcomes:

A.    Deliver £378,000 financial savings

B.    Improve and extend the council’s recycling offer

C.    Reduce the amount of waste generated overall

D.    Better comply with the national waste hierarchy

It would be reasonable to expect cover these issues. The report can be found HERE

Overall, it’s not exactly the next PD James novel, but it does contain a significant amount of back slapping and a modest amount of retrospective learning - from the operational difficulty in dealing with ~20,000 requests to “opt in” and pay £40 for the waste collections.

In summary:

●      A) was over achieved due to greater than anticipated sign up

●      B) Brent will suggest that weekly blue bin (dry recycling) addresses this

●      C) not clear – as I will explain below.

●      D) dependent upon the outcome of C

Detail 

Deliver £378,000 financial savings

Brent estimated that 17,000  (15%) of households would sign up to the green bin tax, in reality, 20,000  (18%) signed up. This lead to the council receiving £480,000, a £3 profit for each household that signed up over and above the original target This is a modest surplus per additional household, but may also explain why the coucil are already suggesting that the green bin tax won’t increase next year - or suggest that their poor estimations led to them overcharging for the service. Another interpretation is of course that Brent is getting shafted by Veolia.

I say poor estimation because the sign up was 3,000 more than the 17,000 estimated, that’s a 17%  forecast error. It’s in the councils interest to understate the forecast for the following reasons. Low forecast leads to:

●      “higher than expected uptake” headlines, helping spin the introduction of the green bin tax in  a positive light

●      Bonus extra cash if forecast is exceeded because the cost per household is set to recover costs over a smaller number

●      Low probability of making a loss on the new scheme

Reduce the amount of waste generated overall

This is where spin on the green bin tax starts to wear a bit thin. It’s also worth remembering that at the same time as the green bin tax was introduced, we moved to weekly blue bin collections.

First a rather odd assertion, that moving from collecting the blue top bins (dry recycling) bins from every 2 weeks, to weekly would have zero impact - thoroughly implausible!

"It was also anticipated that the changes would have no significant impact on the council’s recycling rate. This was because it was predicted that the amount of dry recycling collected by the weekly service would remain the same”

I know before weekly blue bin collections i was regularly faced with an overflowing blue bin, so some residual cans or boxes went into the grey bin. If my experience is partially replicated across some of the 110,000 households then from April 2015 the council should expect grey bin (residual waste) volumes to FALL and blue bin (dry recycling) volumes to INCREASE - keep this in mind for later.

“whilst the amount of collected organic waste would reduce, it would be mainly displaced to home composting or to the council’s Recycling Centre at Abbey Road”

The rate of “organic waste” collected from households and recycling centres has fallen by 3,248 tonnes between April and October. This is equivalent to 72 kgs of organic waste for each of the 45,000 green bins that the council removed from residents. i’d estimate that to be 2, maybe 3 wheely bins FULL of grass or hedge trimmings. Composting this amount of green waste would require more than just a garden Dalek composting thing, and will soon mount up.

So what’s happening to this stuff if it’s not being collected? Yes some is probably being composted at home, but I’d argue the rest is going to landfill. However, the scrutiny report appears to ignore / gloss over this waste stream. The amount that goes to landfill is costing the council £82.60 for every tonne - this cost is glossed over and lost (and probably ignored) in the opaque mystery benefits stated earlier.

Furthermore, the report states

“... the service changes appear to have had a positive impact on the borough’s recycling rate, and have had no noticeable impact on residual waste (grey bin) tonnages”

The report appears to come to this conclusion with some very simplistic, and rather misleading graph below.

The blue bars are 2014, red bars 2015. The green Bin Tax was introduced on 31st March 2015 - so the very end of Q1.

The graph shows that Q2 2015 grey bin tonnages were more than in 2014 and that they increased by a greater amount between Q1 and Q2 in 2015 than they did in 2014. so I’d argue that there was an impact.

The GLARING omission is of course, Q3 and  Q4 2015 data. as a reminder Q2 is April to June and Q3 is July to September - arguably the time when gardeners would expect to cut the grass, prune hedges, weeding, and general maintenance in the garden during the summer. The exclusion of Q3 data in a report written to cover the 9 months from March is incompetent, but at worse it’s deliberately misleading. By the time the report was published, most of Q4 should have passed, allowing the council to make a reasonable estimate of Q4 volumes.

One data point is nowhere near enough data to draw any conclusions or make any decisions; instead more data should be presented.

Has Brent reduced the amount of waste generated overall? Probably, but only because some people will compost some of the waste themselves, even if all other green waste goes into the grey bin.

Better comply with the national waste hierarchy and does it now comply better with the national waste hierarchy?

Source LINK

Effecitvely, the idea is to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (then dump the rest) - in the process produce high quality (pure) recyclable material, and the smallest volume of landfill.

This is supported by the “landfill Tax” which is currently £82.60 and payable by councils and commercial producers of landfill waste.

The datum (singular data point) shows an increase in the amount of grey bin waste, and hides the impact in Q3 and Q4. it also hides the likely beneficial impact of the weekly blue bin collections and the likely replacement / uplift volume of green waste being diverted to landfill.

The diversion to landfill would be contrary to the national waste hierarchy, the fact these two events coincide make it very difficult to unpick the size of the impact of each on landfill waste, we can only look at the net impact.

in conclusion, there are a number of unanswered questions

1.     How much residual waste was produced in Q3 and Q4 2015 - and why wasn’t this included in this report?

2.     How much green waste did they estimate would be diverted to landfill by bin tax avoiding residents, and have they budgeted for this?

3.     How much green waste was collected in the 45,000 green bins removed from residents?

4.     Did the council intentionally under-estimate the green bin tax uptake, leading to overcharging residents?

5.     How does Brent’s performance compare to other councils in London and England that have introduced a similar Green Bin Tax?

Harrow College proudly shows the way on Sustainability

It was great to visit Harrow College again today to run an environmental stall for their Sustainability Week.  I encouraged staff and students to fill in an on-line survey to see the impact of their life to see many earth planets their current life style was based on. Unfortunately some were consuming the resources of 3 planets or more, when of course we only have one. The lowest was 2.1 planets.

The awareness raising week is busier than ever as the college website demonstrates:

Sustainability Week is a chance for you to participate in lots of activities and information stands for all students and staff to learn about ways we can do more to preserve the earth’s resources, from bees to water conservation, cycling to waste management.

Activities will be at both campuses as follows:
Monday 23rd March - Harrow Weald campus

• Pond and meadow
• Green Party
• Recycling, Up-cycling, food sourcing and charity collections

Tuesday 24th March - Harrow Weald campus

• Cycling events
• Waste management and recycling
• Beekeeping
• Water conservation
• Resourcefulness/ reducing waste
• Up-cycling, food sourcing and charity collections

Thursday 26th March - Harrow on the Hill campus

• Waste management and recycling
• Green party
• Water conservation
• SWISH event (clothes swapping/ recycling)
• Solar panels
• Up-cycling, food sourcing and charity collections

Friday 27th March - Harrow on the Hill campus

• Recycling/ up-cycling
• Food sourcing
• Charity collections
• Resourcefulness/ reducing waste

Pop along to learn more about Sustainability with Harrow College.

I  was interested to see the progress that has been made on their pond and wildlife area on the Harrow Weald campus which is carefully tended by the students.  John proudly told me about the habitats students have created (see below) and the impressive pond life that was seen over the summer, although apparently the frogs still prefer the pond in the greenhouse.