Biobags and the Olympic Kitties

Here I am writing my thoughts from East London and I’ve actually been spending rather a lot of time slightly North… I’m currently working for Islington Council as part of a recycling campaign. I’m going door to door encouraging people to put their food scraps in their brown bins and giving them sample corn starch biodegradable bags. I come home with my hands smelling of chip fat from the bags (though I should be clear, since I’m promoting this stuff, that the smell is mild).

People come up with some really lame reasons for not recycling. Such as ‘I don’t want to mess my garden up with all the boxes’ or ‘it’s not practical in a small house like this’ (the latter I can understand from people with tiny flats, but not when the person is standing in the doorway of an obviously rather expensive new build house in an exclusive cul-de-sac). Or ‘it smells’ (wouldn’t it smell in the normal bin?) Of course I have to be polite, but I’d like to point out how lucky they are. I’m not street level, so I don’t get to recycle my kitchen waste. If I had a garden I could compost it myself, but where I am I can’t even do that.

Ultimate jaw dropping argument though has to be the guy who, when I pointed out that we were running out of landfill, replied that we’d have ‘more space for landfill if we didn’t let all the coloured people into the country’. While there may be some truth in his argument, in that less people (of whatever colour) would mean landfill space lasting longer, I think if I have to choose between living next to a landfill or a houseful of ‘coloured’ people I’ll take the people!

Anyway, last week I got soaked in the rain. This week I’m getting frozen. It is giving me opportunities to review cafes for Qype though as our gang of campaigners seem to end up in at least one new one every day. I’ve never drunk so much hot chocolate.

Meanwhile back East the big issue for me right now is the Celia Hammond Animal Trust’s campaign to save feral cats and kittens from being killed in demolition on the site for the 2012 Olympics. Though the ODA (Olympic Delivery Authority) have been making all the right noises in the media, and some cats have been saved, behind the scenes the ODA seem to be dragging their feet. At the start of December they told the Trust they’d talk about access again ‘next year’. This was shortly after they basically delayed the trust getting on the site of a leaving business until a known group of cats, including a pregnant female, had disappeared, fate unknown. Trust workers have qualifications to work on constructions sites, work at night, and establish feeding stations to get cats into safe areas rather than going into unsafe ones. All costs are being covered by the Trust not the ODA.

If you’d like to support the Trust please sign the petition at: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/2012-olympic-site-cats-at-risk-of-starvation-and-death They are nearly up to their target of 10,000 signatures. I hope they’ll get many more. It may not be the biggest issue in the world, but it is one that anyone can do something about very easily.