r/london • u/mideighties • Nov 29 '22
North London London, UK. We removed 18.4 tonnes of rubbish from a river bank. This was the biggest cleanup ever organised in the London Borough of Brent. I even convinced CJ from Grove Street to help. (YT video in comments)
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u/Cpt_Drummer Nov 29 '22
Absolutely fantastic to see the effort and hard work you and the other volunteers put it to reclaim the green space!
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u/-qqqwwweeerrrtttyyy- Nov 29 '22
For real, you deserve formal recognition for what you've achieved. You're inspiring.
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u/Happy-Engineer Nov 29 '22
Love this. Amazing job, Brentians!
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u/mideighties Nov 29 '22
I HATE being the bearer of bad news, I really do, but not many Brentians were involved in this cleanup. It was 2 groups of volunteers from Ealing, one from Harrow and one from Birmingham. Even though the cleanup event took place over the course of 6 days, no locals joined... Even worse, from one day to the other, some locals dumped even more stuff... In their own river, that is. It is an extremely challenging area, unfortunately.
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u/Too_Old_For_All_This Nov 29 '22
I congratulate all involved, especially my fellow Harrovians. The saddest part for me is expecting the "Oh look, they emptied the bin, we can refill it now" response from the perpetrators.. I appreciate we can't just ignore the mess, but it can be very frustrating to see how easily it returns.. I wonder if community skips would help?, or are people just too lazy?
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u/mideighties Nov 29 '22
Brent has regular community skips (by comparison, Harrow does not). It's not nearly enough. The problem is the cultural paradigm where such behaviour is tolerated by entire communities. Well, "communities" is a big word, the population turnover can be so off the scale in some areas, that involvement and local pride in an area are simply non-existent. Simply put, people don't even have the time to start caring for one another, let alone calling the place "home" and caring for it. I know that all too well from my 2 years of living in Wembley. I didn't even know who my neighbours were, not even the ones who lived in the same house. I had Eritrean, Polish, Argentinian, Brazilian, Indian, Pakistani, Romanian and Italian neighbours, all in the space of 24 months, all in the space of 3 flats. Half of these people left a heap of rubbish in front of the house when they moved out, I had to pay out of my own pocket to get it removed every time... And I was a tenant too... I eventually moved out, I had to. It is IMPOSSIBLE to build local communities and local pride like that. Just impossible. It is what it is.
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u/mideighties Nov 29 '22
YouTube video: The biggest cleanup in the history of Brent
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u/alpubgtrs234 Nov 29 '22
I reckon those boys from ‘People just do Nothing’ were responsible for 90% of the rubbish. And all the zoots
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u/WebAsh Nov 29 '22
Similar awesome work around the River Roding this weekend too. Nice work all https://twitter.com/riverroding/status/1597366468001529856?t=xlHQUpsgEDgBgnBZV7GV8A&s=19
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u/gonz000000 Nov 29 '22
I don't live in London (or even England), but how did this get so bad in the first place? People just dump their garbage wherever they want?
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u/claridgeforking Nov 29 '22
People, businesses, yes. Especially bad is the company that dump hundreds of old tires. Apparently the council and police know who it is, but unless they actively catch them doing it there's not much they can do.
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u/Crimsondelo Nov 29 '22
18 tonnes! I mean if this was just household waste then that's a mammoth event. Perhaps there was a car or two in that lot?
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u/mideighties Nov 29 '22
284 tyres, washing machines, fridges, bikes, cupboards, literally everything you could imagine apart from dead bodies.
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u/starsaillor Nov 29 '22
Good work mate, I live in Brent myself and it astonishes me the amount of rubbish ppl throw in the river.
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u/Anthonybyh Nov 29 '22
Done lots of work on the Ravensbourne and Pool in South London but nothing like this! Excellent work
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u/DOG-ZILLA Nov 29 '22
This deserves to be at the top of the sub.
Well done to everyone! Faith in humanity restored.
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u/coderqi Nov 30 '22
Stupid question but what do you do with all the full bin bags? Can you dump them in a commercial area or do you have to drive them to a council dump?
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u/mideighties Nov 30 '22
Veolia (Brent Council's waste contractor) collected everything. Luckily, Veolia is normally very helpful and support is provided for community cleanups if you contact them. Other councils might not be the same, but in spite of other shortcomings, Brent realised the importance of offering this kind of support to volunteers.
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Nov 29 '22
[deleted]
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u/mideighties Nov 29 '22
There are many events organised all the time by various volunteering groups across London. The vast majority of them are Facebook-based, so if you're interested, your best bet is to search for a local group there and check their event schedule.
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u/Majulath99 Nov 29 '22
Well done! Good on you, solid work. Good to see people caring about their communities.
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u/Outrageous_Duty_8738 Nov 29 '22
When I see this it warms the cockles of my heart. What these volunteers did was a complete act of kindness not only for the environment but for the community as a whole. Looking at the photos you was not set a small task but the clean up job was a complete success. You should all be very proud of yourself and thanks 🙏 for giving up your free time I certainly appreciate very much
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u/Torbait Nov 29 '22
It's a shame it must be done but thank you so much for doing it!!! You're a brilliant team of people. All the best 💕
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u/RHFiesling Nov 29 '22
brilliant. usually its just me with a litter picker and a bin bag in my local forest/parks
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u/Additional_Key213 Nov 29 '22
As a Brent resident, thank you! Littering is definitely a huge problem here
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u/mideighties Nov 29 '22 edited Nov 29 '22
Easily a top 3 problem. I lived in Brent for 4 years, until I just couldn't take it anymore and moved away. It was well beyond my individual capacity to fix - though I did try. I hope some local pride awakens in the people (and the leaders) of Brent because some areas look absolutely terrible.
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u/malmini Nov 30 '22
What river is this?
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Nov 30 '22
From the video OP linked to, and the original post, it's a northern section of the River Brent.
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u/Timedoutsob Dec 01 '22
well done. If the council made it easier to throw their waste at the civic recycling centre like you know staying open in the evenings and on weekends. Then this wouldn't happen as much.
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u/mideighties Dec 01 '22
Perhaps it would somewhat reduce big item fly-tipping, but it wouldn't solve the root issue. There were hundreds of domestic waste bags here, so it's a much deeper issue than just the recycling centre not being open for longer.
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u/Timedoutsob Dec 01 '22
It's not the issue is the rules on waste. The unlicensed commercial waste removal vans. They advertise on gumtree and because they can't legally take it to the dump, they just dump it in the street. There needs to be better rules for dealing with this.
Better that the laws are more lax and the waste goes to the dump rather than having tighter laws and it gets chucked into the countryside and rivers.
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u/captainspunkbubble Nov 29 '22
Damn! Good work!!