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Beware of bin snoopers
• HAVE you had a visit?
So, Camden is now executing dawn raids on its residents’ recycling bins.
A special squad named the “participation monitoring team” is prowling the streets early in the morning and ferreting around in our recycling boxes to see what they can find.
Last Thursday morning at 7.15 we came across a furtive, day-glo clad figure, complete with clipboard, crouched low over the recycling bins in the front garden of our house and having a good old rummage among the contents.
When challenged, she replied that she was from the council and was checking the contents of everybody’s bins in the street. She did not however, offer any form of ID.
We were obviously somewhat alarmed and immediately contacted Camden Council to report the incident, as we needed to ascertain that this person was not a “bin-diver” intent on some criminal activity such as identity theft.
The reaction from the council recycling department was conflicting to say the least.
One officer informed us that such an activity by a council employee would be illegal without the permission of the householder while another advised us to contact the police as the bin-rummager could well be a criminal.
Finally we received an apologetic phone call from a woman at Camden, informing us that she was very sorry if we had been alarmed but the person in question had been part of a new initiative called the participation monitoring team, employed to go around the neighbourhood and poke about in the recycling boxes “to see what people were putting in their bins.” She added that “the council is interested to see if the boxes had stuff in them that they shouldn’t have”.
Personally, we don’t have a problem with recycling, think it is a good thing to be doing, and have been recycling for years. However, we do take great exception to council employees snooping around early in the morning on our property and rifling through the bins (the contents of which incidentally, are still ours) without permission.
Is this latest activity by the council the harbinger of yet more draconian measures to extort fines and penalties from its residents? Like its parking policy, which started out with the best of intentions, Camden’s recycling programme looks as though it could become the latest revenue-raising cash cow for the council coffers.
So residents, beware! Get up early and stand by your bins, lest a clipboard-bearing person comes a-visiting!
DAVID MAXWELL
Jean Donington
Ruth Maxwell
Constantine Road, NW3
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