A Leeds resident has come up with a plan to stop her community from turning into a dumping ground each year, after this week's student changeover left it strewn with rubbish.
Ursula Klingel, a mental health service manager, who has lived in Hyde Park for ten years, is so fed up with the amount of reusable items which are thrown away by students, she has devised a plan whereby local residents on each street would act as collection points for unwanted items.
Her idea is that local residents would help sort out reuseable and non-reuseable items with the incentive that they could sell the more valuable items or give them to charity.
Local collection points would also make it easier for students to recycle larger items such as furniture and white goods. As well as reducing the amount of rubbish on the streets, it is hoped that the idea would improve student-resident relationships which can become strained at this time of year.
"While I'm pleased that I can save hundreds of pounds worth of goods from being sent to landfill and give them to people in need, the whole situation is just so shocking and wasteful. I find it incredible that students leave duvets and clothes on the streets and it makes me feel like I'm living in a crime zone. I hope that local collection points would help put a stop to that.
"But it's not just the student staples of bedding, clothes and kitchenware that they leave behind, we've found some real treasures this year including antique teapots, sports equipment and a life jacket complete with flare."
Klingel praised the award-winning student Green Streets initiative, which collects unwanted items and redistributes them through a number of 'free shops' to the local community, charities and hostels, but said that a lot of students leave their accommodation in a last-minute panic and so don't take part in the scheme, and that the sheer volume of waste created means that Green Streets cannot cope with it.
Lucy Glynn is a Leeds-based environmental campaigner and can be found on Twitter @lucyglynn.
What do you think of the idea? Want to register your interest in being a collection point? Let us know via the comments below.
