How Green is my Council?
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How Green is my Council? |
        Imagine you’re Director of Environmental Services. It’s what you’ve been fearing. You are summoned to see the Leader who tells you that the Council has decided that it must raise its “Green” profile if it’s to reach Government targets. As Director of Environmental Services the responsibility will be yours and you’re asked to go away and produce a report. As usual, there won’t be any more real money, although there are promises of short-term grants and a reorganization of Council services that will leave you with a significantly larger department (not to mention an increased salary). What do you do? Well, you’re experienced in the provision of Council wide refuse services, although these have long since been contracted out to the private sector. The model works – even if you do remember the days when the Council provided all its own services and was proud of it - and you’re aware that other Councils are doing something similar for recycling paper, glass, cans and other materials. It’s just a question of drawing up detailed service specifications and going out to tender, something that Legal Services can do in their sleep. More important, doing the business on a day-to-day basis will be someone else’s responsibility, so you won’t be losing any sleep either. You have informal talks with your current provider who is encouraging. Of course they can put together a service; in fact, they’re already doing it for an Authority down the road and the results are most encouraging. It will take some initial investment in equipment, but that can be spread across a suitably long contract. As a large private company with deals around the country (and the possibility of gaining a toe-hold in Europe), raising the money won’t be a problem. Then it’s just a question of issuing every household with suitable equipment (which might be wheelie-bins, boxes, or plastic bags – each option carefully costed so the Councillors will have some real choices to make) and issuing basic publicity. It’s as simple as that. People want to do it; they seem to care. All you have to do is provide the means. Reluctantly, you visit your neighbouring authority (no-one likes admitting that someone else is doing something you aren’t). The results seem encouraging. You’re taken out on one of the new fleet of specialist vehicles and can see for yourself that people leave their wheelie-bins by their front door for collection. Better still, there is some evidence that the amount of refuse collected on the normal run is going down – so there’ll be cost savings there eventually. Your report is accepted and the service commissioned. Everyone is optimistic. Targets can be met – surpassed even – and the Council can claim to be doing its bit for the environment (not that there’s many votes in that it has to be said). You have your bigger department (and salary) and, buoyed up with success, you’re already beginning to eye up jobs in even bigger authorities. But then the problems start. What no one told you (because it wasn’t in their interests) is that the take up of the service is very patchy. The boxes you’ve issued (the Council didn’t go for the deluxe service) are too wide to be carried comfortably down the hallways of the terraced houses that are common in one part of the Authority: in some flats there’s just nowhere to keep them. Then there are places the vehicles can’t access and, in some streets, the police are threatening to prosecute people for obstruction if they leave their boxes out on the street (as they don’t have front gardens, there’s nowhere else to put them). There have even been a handful of complaints from people with bad backs who can’t carry the boxes, let alone put anything in them. Still, starting from nothing mean the results do look dramatic and there’s bound to be teething troubles with anything new (you can always try to change things when the contract eventually comes up for review). However, prudence suggests that you get your application in to one of those bigger authorities pretty damn quick … There’s a certain inevitability about the process and it has to do with increasing size. Any service that is driven top down (and that’s virtually all our public, private and voluntary services) must, by definition, be big enough to justify its existence, and that means seeking comprehensive, coherent solutions to the problems being tackled. As the size of organization gets bigger, the need to find a one size fits all solution becomes greater; except that real people steadfastly refuse to conform to the assumptions made - they tend to come in all shapes and sizes, after all. So the services provided necessarily take less and less account of individuals. If you fit the profile of an average user, great – but if you don’t, then tough. So, what’s the alternative? Well, lets stand the problem on its head. Suppose you wanted to encourage recycling in your street. At this stage you probably don’t even know who your neighbours are, but a sensible starting point would be to get together some information about why we should recycle and then call on your neighbours at a mutually convenient time (which might be evenings or weekends). Each conversation will be different and, in the process, your views of what is required are likely to change. People are being reached out to and engaged in a process. They own it. No presumptions about outcomes are being made and there are no limitations such as budgets to be considered. Individuals’ ability and willingness to become involved will be as varied as their personal circumstances, but the wonderful thing about planning at the human scale is that, providing there is sufficient interest to get the project off the ground, the complexity that is real life can be accommodated. What about the lady at Number 4 who is recovering from an operation? – well, all she has to do is phone three doors down when she has a bagful to be collected and someone will pop round. And the man at Number 31 who works nights? He can arrange to leave his container at the central collection point in front of the garage at number 15 when he leaves for work (being suitably quiet about it). Having a place where materials to be recycled can be deposited allows people to bring as much or little as they like depending on their inclination, habits and capacity to store things at home. Some people might even be willing to sort the stuff into different categories so that the Council’s involvement is reduced to what it’s good at – the simplistic task of moving a load from the street (again, at a time that is mutually convenient rather than a set day each week) to the recycling plant. The money saved could be knocked off local taxes or go to recompense those involved at street level (payment through a local currency is another option but that is the subject of a future article). The possibilities are endless and reflect the fact that, at the local level, releasing energy and initiative leads to people trying different things and responding flexibly and organically to changing circumstances. By contrast, centrally imposed solutions are limited (risks are rarely taken because the consequences of failure are so much greater) and tend to be inflexible and mechanistic. People’s lives aren’t changed when services are provided for them, but their attitude towards waste disposal in particular and the environment in general is likely to be radically altered when they themselves assume direct responsibility. If local communities were to take back first line responsibility for the wide range of services – health, education, public order, etc. - that continue to be appropriated by the bewildering range of centralised, bureaucratic monoliths, we would be living in a healthier and more secure world. Recycling, as a symbol for a more ecologically aware consciousness, is as good a place to start as any. Chris Wright 4th November 2005 |
Action for Sustainable Living, St Wilfrid's Enterprise Centre, Royce Road, Hulme, , M15 5BJ.Email: [email protected] Tel: 0845 634 4510 Fax: 0870 167 4655. |