If you’re flatting or have ever explored the area around the University specifically on the knighton road side then you’ve probably noticed the absolute huge clusterfuck of rubbish that piles up on every street corner and every footpath and every park. Black trash bags seem to spawn in around bin day along with a mattress that never goes away, then the piles grow and grow and grow but are often never collected for months on end leading to more people dumping their shit and the whole area just filling up with garbage.
In the three years of flatting in the area almost every week our lawn gets littered with trash that blows down the street and numerous times people have dumped bags of rubbish on our lawn. So why is this all happening and why are there great ham east garbage patches constantly appearing.
The issue seems to stem from the fact that once traditional single house single section student flats have almost all been replaced with big complexes and duplexes. What once would have been one bin per flat per section has turned into one bin per 6 flats per section. Developers don’t give a shit that the infrastructure was not designed for the number of people that now inhabit the area and the result is no parking and shit loads of rubbish.
Another issue that’s contributing to this is the actual collection of the rubbish. Living in a flat of 4 boys you produce a decent amount of rubbish and a hell of a lot of recycling. Some weeks the bi weekly bin collection just doesn’t cut it and it must certainly be more difficult in bigger flats. The bin collection people also won’t take your bins if they’re overfilled or if your recycling has incorrect items in it so when some dumbass puts his apple core in your recycling bin the night before collection then you’re really up shit creek when your bin gets stickered and you have to explain to your flatmates that you cant host cause you dont have anywhere to put cans and bottles for the next two weeks.
So what’s the solution ? Move out of the area ? Set it on Fire ? Do all your recycling late at night at college hall ? complain to the council ? add to the pile ?
Ham East isn’t inherently a shit hole. It’s overloaded. There are simply more people living here than the systems were designed for.
Until that mismatch is addressed, the Great Ham East Garbage Patch will keep reappearing semester after semester.
