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BINMAGEDDON!: How Veolia is transforming Croydon

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The abundant blooms of roses in the front garden of a typical terraced home in Addiscombe

Croydon Council says that 75 per cent of households in the borough are having their bin collection days changed, all as part of an effort to increase recycling rates and to make contractors Veolia’s work more efficient.

Oh, and to save the council £5million a year.

That money, the council says, will be used to protect front-line services. Though many people feel that their bin collections are a front-line service.

It’s doing nothing to protect resident’s front gardens, however.

Residents have recoiled in horror at the sight of serried ranks of black wheelie bins lining the pavements of our streets.

But the transformation is impacting the look of the borough in other ways, too.

Such as this.

And how that same front garden is today, blossoming with Veolia’s wheelie bins

The front garden in the pictures on this page is the same one.

It is a “before” and “after” exercise, on the effects of Croydon’s Binmageddon.

The house is typical of many homes around the borough.

The front garden is small in area, on a row of old terraced houses in Addiscombe, but which the owners worked hard to beautify with tender loving care over many years with well-established rose bushes, fuchsias and other plants.

At the weekend, Inside Croydon reader Clare Buxton alerted us to the fate of her front garden as a result of Veolia’s land-grab.

“I tearfully dug up beautiful and ancient roses to accommodate these ugly bins,” Buxton wrote.

Buxton had just read our report on how, for residents on some streets in Addiscombe, intervention by their councillors had seen the roll out of bins rolled back, because the properties concerned were deemed not suited to accommodate the bins.

“I wish I’d seen this earlier,” Buxton said.

 


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