Charity in bid to get ethnic minority Londoners recycling

The charity believes that general recycling messages do not always get through to BAME groups and that specific methods need to be employed. The survey, to be carried out over March and April, is designed to derive information on the best way to approach these groups with the recycling message.

” Most of our community came to the UK in the mid-nineties when there wasn't even a word in our language for 'recycling'“
– Orhal Bil, Turkish representative

At a London conference on encouraging ethnic groups' participation in recycling yesterday, Jagdeesh Singh, coordinator at London 21, said that a number of London boroughs, like Lambeth, Brent, Hackney and Tower Hamlets are already giving active attention to how their recycling schemes can reach out to communities so far not engaged.

He said: “Whilst there is no comprehensive evidence to indicate that participation from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities is less or more than mainstream population, there is significant anecdotal indicators to suggest that minority participation is patchy and uneven.

“The core purpose is to consider how local schemes can be made more inclusive and accessible to local minority residents,” he added.

Integrating
The London 21 project, which has been running for a year, has spawned 14 BAME recycling projects around London. Mr Singh said that recycling and green issues are an easy way of integrating BAME groups into the community.

The conference saw a number of project leaders from within the 14 groups talk about how their communities could be targeted with the recycling message.

Orhal Bil, a representative from the Turkish and Kurdish communities said: “Most of our community came to the UK in the mid-nineties when there wasn't even a word in our language for 'recycling'. First of all, you need to make sure than different communities understand the terminology you are using.”

Language
The importance of spreading the recycling message at community groups, through native language newspapers, and door knocking where raised by each of the speakers. As was paying attention to the particular culture of a group.

“In the Turkish community, women are still the ones who stay at home and look after the house, so at the moment, the recycling message needs to get to them. Where I live in North London, the women meet regularly for a breakfast club, so we disseminate the recycling message at these,” explained Mr Bil.

A representative from the Jewish community, living in the large Jewish area of Stamford Hill in Hackney said that it was useful to produce leaflets in different languages. “We distribute leaflets in Yiddish. Although the community is generally fluent in English, the leaflets make them feel that recycling is an issue for them as well,” said Yehuda Ives.

However, Sally Warner from the Waste and Resources Action Programme warned that “simply hiring a translator for literature is not enough” and that attention had to be paid to how different groups best receive information.

Festivals
Mr Ives also praised Hackney council for putting on additional waste and recycling collections during Jewish festivals to cope with extra food and packaging waste that is produced.

A list of recommended action points from the survey is to be published in a subsequent summary report, bringing together research from WRAP, Waste Watch and London Sustainability Exchange.