Well I started to investigate my follow-up story for last weeks news story. I began with contacting Birmingham Friends of the Earth and was fortunate to get through as I was told it could be difficult by a friend of mine.
I asked them what they thought of Birmingham City Council’s policies and facilities. The response started off positively with them saying that it has improved quite a lot they still have a lot to do such as provide more doorstep recycling collections to flats within Birmingham.
Following on from that I asked whether they thought that Compared to other Councils, such as Sandwell and Solihull whether Birmingham was doing the best it could do, this was in reference do the other council’s providing pre-sorting as the recycled material is collected. The response was that they do have targets and it makes sense that they do the best they can do, but by being part of the “Energy from Waste” is simply not enough, a lot of the materials they end up burning could be used for recycling, simply burning them is wrong and its a dirty practice.
I asked he felt that burning the materials should count towards the targets set for the council, I did this just incase after further research I found that the council includes the stats from burning the materials as part of the recycling targets. The response was as expect, it should not count, while it’s not technically land fill, it’s also not recycling.
Additionally I asked what they thought of the current situation with Sandwell and the problems with the possible bin-men strike. The response was that their should be investment in recycling but not to the extent that the bin-men end up worse off.
I believe the main point I drew from this interview over the phone was that, while on the face of it “Energy from Waste” seems like a good idea, for the most part a lot of the materials that are being burnt could be properly recycled into reuseable items.
Next I contacted Sandwell, to ask about the possible strike. I was put through to their press office, I was told not to quote what she said, but she corrected my idea that it was due to the budget that the bin men were losing money, instead it was down to the single status that councils throughout the UK came up with, so that all workers have the same wages and it has nothing to do with the budget of Sandwell. Additionally I heard that a lot of civil are also striking soon, I’ll do some further research into this.
After realising this, I questioned whether the bin men also carry out the collection of recycling. This she didn’t know, I asked whether she would find out for me and she said she would phone me back, but as of yet I’ve not received a call. If I don’t receive the call today I’ll phone them up again tomorrow and ask them again.
I believes there’s definitely a story behind this, as well as a couple of angles. One could be about the acceptance of Energy from Waste when it could be considered a way of properly recycling. The other being the effect on Sandwell and possibly the rest of the West Midlands if the whole of the civil service including the bin men go on strike.
Recycled News 
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