Shore improvements progress report

The City of Edinburgh Council have issued a progress report on the improvement works to the Shore. As many locals will have noticed - the works are only half completed at present as they halted for the festive season. 

The road closure will soon be back in order to allow workers to compelte the improvements. More details here: 

Shore Update

Incedentally, volunteers for the Friends of the Water of Leith Basin have spent several hours in December out in a boat removing some of the more unpleasant looking things that end up in the water there. 

They plan to have another litter clearance session in January or February and are calling on locals to help them note the location of any unsightly rubbish they see on a map that's kept behind the bar in the Malt and Hops. 

If you would like to get involved in clearing rubbish from the Water of Leith Basin, then you should contact us, and we'll forward your details to the organisers. 

Poll: What should be done to cut litter on the streets of Leith?

The Leith Neighbourhood Partnership staff are in the process of producing the next Neighbourhood Plan which will guide their work for the next three years. 

One of the top priorities that's been identified by local people is the problem of litter in the streets. 

There was going to be a focus group for local residents and council staff about this issue next week, but everyone is on holiday so it has been postponed. 

In the meantime, to help out we put this poll together, to try to gather your ideas. We'll share the results with the council and the people at the focus group whenever it actually happens. 

So, it's worth voting, as your suggestions could affect what the local council officers do for the next three years.

You can vote for as many options as you want to - and you can add your own ideas in too. 

If you're using a mobile and can't see the poll in your browser, you might be able to vote here.

The Big Leith Clean-up: Leith Links

Greener Leith would like to thank everyone who turned out at the weekend for a brisk clean-up of Leith Links. The weather held out for us, and the only hinderance was a lack of litter pickers - we had more volunteers than the council supplied tools!

Despite this, you can see that local residents hard work had a huge impact, with a sizable number of bags of litter collected together with pallets and other random larger objects. Special mention should be made of David, who got so engrossed in the suprisingly satisfying job of clearing litter from the links, that he unfortunately missed the delicious soup and rolls provided by Out of the Blue - and paid for Leith Links Commnity Council.

This is the second community clean-up we've organised with Leith Links Community Council this year - and serves to underline the commitment local residents are prepared to make to help improve their local park. Leith Links Community Council are also planning to plant even more bulbs on the Links in conjunction with local school kids. More info on that initiative here:

http://leithlinkscc.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/leith-links-bulb-planting/

The Big Leith Clean-up: Victoria Park

Thanks to everyone who turned out on Saturday to help give a quick clean to Victoria Park, especially the little people who were all very enthusiatic! In just over an hour and half, we collected about 13 bags of rubbish from the park.

This was the first time that we'd organised a clean-up in Victoria Park, and needless to say we had the obligatory discussions over whether Victoria Park was actually in Leith. We think it probably is.

We've got two more clean-ups planned. Next Saturday, we're working with Leith Links Community Council to clean-up Leith Links. (More details here).

And, on the 6th of November, we're working with Leith Central Community Council to clean-up Pilrig Park (More details here).

Given that it's likely to have got a bit cooler by then, you'll be delighted to know that we've got the funding together to pay Out of the Blue to come to the parks on their marvelous trike to provide hot soup and filled rolls for everyone who takes part in the Leith Links and Pilrig Park clean-ups.

Funding for these events has come from Leith Central Community Council, Leith Links Community Council and Vegware. We're most grateful to all of these organisations for their support.

Beach Litter Clean Up: Wardie Bay, Granton

On 3rd August, 12 volunteers lifted their litter pickers and donned yellow volunteer vests to clean our beautiful local beach, Wardie Bay. The audio clip below explains why we love the beach, what we found and why anyone would want to pick litter for an evening..

This annual clean up clean up was organised by a local community group, linked to a local church. Events like this are desperately needed to tackle the huge litter problem at the bay. Thankfully community groups and local residents have taken the iniative to organise clean ups throughout the summer.  

Wardie bay is a great place to relax, take a walk, build a sandcastle or spot a seal if you're lucky. The bay hit the headlines earlier this year when thousands of starfish were washed up in a 'natural phenomina'. They loved...and lost.

Organising a clean up is really easy and great fun, you can borrow a wheely bin full of litter pickers from the City of Edinburgh Council for free and once you've set a date, you can promote it to local people in Leith using the events section of the Greener Leith Social.

For more information on organising a communtiy clean-up event, you should check out the "factsheets and leaflets" bit of the Keep Scotland Beautiful website.

Greener Leith plans to organise more clean-up events in the Autumn, and we'll post details nearer the time.

If you have iTunes installed on your computer you can subscribe to our audio as a podcast by clicking here.

Image Credit: Kenny Gunn-Russell

National Spring Clean 2010.

We know, it's not even Christmas. However, Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB) have already opened registration for National Spring Clean 2010. Last April 60,000 people volunteered accross Scotland to take part in the campaign, clearing a truly stupendous amount of litter from Scotlands public spaces. Greener Leith helped to organise two clean-up events in 2009, in Pilrig Park and along the walkway from Easter Road to Seaflield.

We'll certainly be planning a community clean up event to coincide with National Spring Clean month. Our question to Leithers is this: Which area should we choose?

More information on the National Spring Clean 2010 campaign is available on the Keep Scotland Beautiful website. The website features pages for different types of group; as well as information about what you need to organise your clean up, competition and offer details, case studies from last year and an online map of registered events. If you want to register your own event, KSB will even send you a clean-up kit nearer the time to help get you started.

50 Bags Full

A big thank you is due to all 16 volunteers who turned out to our clean-up event on Sunday the 5th. Together we collected so much rubbish from the walkway that we ran out of bags! However, in just 2 hours we did make a huge difference to the area. In particular, the litter black spot around the Lochend Rd bridge has been totally cleared.

Mostly the rubbish was empty food wrappers and cans, but there was also some wind blown rubbish from the surrounding industrial areas.  We'd also like to thank Leith Links Community Council, The local police and Cllr Robb Munn for their support too. Jim and Annie (who you can see in the photo) from Leith Links Community Council deserve a special thanks as they transported the clean-up kit provided by the council to and from the event.

What you can do now

Obviously, don't drop litter, but the chances are that if you're reading this you probably aren't the kind of person who does drop litter. If we're going to keep the path clean in the future, you can report litter black spots to the council. This year they have more resources to maintain areas like the walkways. You can do this from the website www.fixmystreet.com

There is an incredible amount of dog poo on the path. If you walk your dog on this path, please pick up after your dog. It would make a huge difference.

£700,000 more to Keep North Edinburgh Clean

Last Wednesday there was a very poorly attended Neighbourhood Partnership meeting in the Thomas Morton Hall, where there were more people on the 'top table' than there were in the audience. That was a shame, as there was a fair bit of good news to come out of the meeting - not least on litter. A subject that has cropped up on this blog on more than one occasion.

The Leith area is consistently one of the most littered areas of the city. In part, this is simply a reflection of the high density of this part of the city - there's a lot of people crammed into this corner of the world, and given that 43% of Scots admit to dropping litter - this sadly means that there's also more people who drop litter per square mile.

It is great to see the city chambers have recognised that extra resources are required, and so an extra £700K has been allocated to street cleaning and grounds maintenance for the next year. At the neighbourhood partnership we got some detail on how this will be spent:

• 30 extra temporary staff to add to the current contingent of 64 street cleaning staff and 16 grounds maintenance staff.
• 9 new 'Barrow Beats' covering the length of Leith walk and Great Junction Street and the surrounding streets.
• 2 new Environmental wardens.
• Extra vehicles.

Council officials are hopeful that these extra resources will allow improvements to both the cleanliness of the streets and the way local greenspaces and walkways are maintained. Most of the new staff are set to start work in the 2nd week of April.

Whilst we're on the subject of litter, we note that the Evening News recently published two very critical articles of the Edinburgh Environmental Warden service, calling for the council to scrap the service altogether. Those articles were based on a Freedom of Information request Greener Leith put in to the council.

Greener Leith doesn't share the view that the service should be scrapped altogether, but when we look at these figures it's clear that some thought needs to be put into the role of the wardens. Given that there has been a significant year on year decline in the number of fixed penalty tickets issued by the wardens we wonder whether their role is now so broad that they are unable to act as a deterrent to that 43% of people in Scotland who readily admit they drop litter?

In the 2006/07 financial year the Edinburgh wardens issued 527 litter fines and 164 dog fouling fines city wide. Yet, in the first 9 months of this financial year the wardens had issued just 129 litter fines and 87 dog fouling fines throughout the city. That's looking like the wardens are barely managing to issue half the fines they were two years ago. When you break this down to Leith the issue becomes even clearer - In the 9 months from April 2008 the wardens service fined just 15 people for litter and 8 people for dog fouling.

Given these figures, Greener Leith is delighted to learn that the North Edinburgh Area is to gain extra wardens as they are sorely needed. But without a refocussing of the wardens time on enforcement, we wonder whether the extra staff will make as much difference as they could.

A relentless focus on tackling this costly form of law breaking, and a clear zero tolerance message has made a huge difference to Glasgow, where many thousands of fines have been issued in just the last two years. In Aberdeen, the council has recently created a 75 strong team of super wardens with powers to issue parking tickets as well as littering and dog fouling fines. If other Scottish cities see the value of increasing the numbers of fines issued to litter louts, and can come up with innovative ways to do it, we can't help but wonder why Edinburgh seems to be failing to follow suit?