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Hull Friends of the Earth

Benches made from scrap wood HCC Waste Manangement visit the wildlife garden Crates kindly donated by Jack's Glass On the weighbridge The open door to the allotments Our float with crates to make raised beds

Diary for July 04

 

5 July 2004 Mark has made us 2 benches - to be stored in the container until we decide how to secure them. We are continuing to collect bags and put the waste into the compost bins, which are getting quite full.

19 July 2004 The material we are collecting is getting too much for our compost bins. We had a meeting with Hull City Council Waste Management, on site, to discuss disposing of our surplus waste. At first the suggestion was for a skip to be brought on site, but that was rejected because there was no room for the skip vehicle to manoeuvre. It was then proposed that we take the waste directly to Wilmington, where it could be accurately weighed. We thought this was a good idea.

We collected 113 bags today, and kept 82 in the float for a trial run later in the week.

21 July 2004 Paul Thomas (HCC Waste Management) arranged for us to take the float to HCC's main disposal site at Wilmington. When Mark and I got there, it quickly became obvious that it was too dangerous. Huge vehicles were arriving and departing every minute, and the float would get in their way - assuming they even saw us!

The site manager proposed we take the waste to the household site instead, and unload it into the green waste skip. We would still be able to use the weighbridge before and after the unloading. We did this, and managed to unload the 82 bags with no problems.

26 July 2004 Before starting our rounds, we collected some very useful crates. These will make raised beds and save us having to construct them from pallets.

We took 76 bags to Wilmington, to the weighbridge. Our first load weighed 500 kgs.

27 July 2004 We now had to get rid of a dozen builder's bags full of ivy, which were on the CARGO site. It took 2 trips to Wilmington. Total weight: 608 kgs.

When we got back to the CARGO site, we discovered a problem. Someone had helped themselves to most of our pallets! This was upsetting, as we had collected about 30 special "European"-sized ones, smaller than the normal, which would be ideal to make compost bins/raised beds with. We transferred the remaining pallets into the container.

28 July 2004 We have also had kids coming onto the allotments through an open doorway from a garage (door pulled off its hinges). They took one of our empty crates to make a den.Having dragged the crate back again, we decided to take some action to make it clear that materials on our site are not abandoned. We painted our crates with green wood preserver and stencilled HFOE on all of them.

We are keeping all materials we collect locked in the container, and will fill all crates with garden waste immediately.