Green waste recycling project Ranwell West
A very exciting project has been launched to start green waste recycling – composting – on the Ranwell West estate. Academics from Queen Mary University will be conducting a behavioural study of residents to find out what system might work for people who live on the estate.
Background
Currently, neither food waste nor green waste is not collected from flats in Tower Hamlets which make up 80% of the housing mix in the borough. There are unique challenges to collecting food/green waste from flats which is why the council have not managed to tackle it before. However, central government has legislated on the issue and it will become a legal requirement for the council to collect food waste from all homes in the borough by 2025.
Waste collections quickly get messy and dirty and less effective, so understanding local attitudes will be really important for the council to get this right across the borough.
Research project
The East London Garden Society and Queen Mary University of London have teamed up to research attitudes to green waste recycling. Once the researchers have gathered their initial evidence, residents will set up a green waste recycling trial to gauge the receptiveness of residents to separating their food waste. Once the trial has started, the researchers will interview their respondents again to find out if attitudes have changed at all.
Trial and future community composting
We hope to be able to use the research and trial to set up a community-run composting system on the Ranwell West estate. There are examples of successful community compositing schemes elsewhere in Tower Hamlets. It is important for any scheme to be appropriate to the setting, manageable for the residents and sustainable in the long term.
In addition, I will be involving council officers in this project to ensure that they can use the results of the research to improve their plans for food waste collection across the borough.
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