After many years of built-up litter and fly-tipping issues in the Arthur's Hill area, some residents have become self-reliant in making the place they call 'home' clean and beautiful.
But despite their efforts it's an ongoing battle with rubbish being regularly dropped, blown around or even large loads of fly-tipping dumped off, according to Taymar Pitman, 42 of Elswick.
She has been working hard to keep Arthur's Hill, Elswick, West Fenham and Spital Tongues, and many other surrounding areas clean and green.
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She is focusing on the litter picking issue alongside many other environmental issues.
She said: “I think community engagement is the biggest thing we can do. There used to be a man with his cart and broom cleaning the area but we don’t have that anymore.
“People want their area to look nice, they remember how it used to be when there was pride in the local area, people still have it but I guess they are quite jaded and don’t know what to do.
“They just need, I suppose, someone to take control, saying we’re going to do this community clean up, and would you like to get on board and clean the area up.”
The Green Party campaigner has listed the importance of community and political involvement, she said: “There is a distinct lack in West Fenham in comparison to Arthur's Hill. In that way, it has been more difficult to engage with people. I want to enable them to get involved,
“There’s a lot of bus stops with no bins so I want to get more bins around.
“Pushing as hard as I can to make the Newcastle City Council work not just in one area but on a wider scale,
“To draw people in, in the past we have done community litter picks and a picnic afterwards, word of mouth spreads around and more people come in.
“In people's agenda, the most concerns people have are about air pollution, more parks and playgrounds, and a clean area. People are recognising the climate crisis, which has absolutely amazed me.
“Just ten minutes here and there of cleaning outside your house can make a big difference.”
Habeeba Haque, 25, a resident in Arthur's Hill said:
"I have seen more of the litter come from shops nearby and it’s never cleaned up which just leads to everything just being piled up.
“The only way litter gets cleared is on occasions when volunteers from the community decide to do some litter picking in our area.
“As I live at the top of my street, I’ve noticed the more I walk down all the way to the bottom, the more litter I notice.
“And seeing all of this on a daily basis does make me feel like the area is very unloved and not respected.
“There have been regular occasions where people just decide to hang around my street and just leave empty cans on our gate. And this is from people who don’t live in the area and are just there to eat.
“I think if everyone played their part in cleaning litter outside their house, the streets would be much cleaner. I’ve noticed people that do this there’s less litter outside compared to those that just let it be.”
Tay Pitman said: “Quite a lot of the litter on the West Road and Arthur’s Hill area is generated from the shops, restaurants, and takeaways.
“I think a lot of work needs to be done in engaging with the restaurants, to see what they can do with waste disposal.
“In Grainger Market, some of the stores encourage you to use the market bins rather than their own ones, as it costs for them, and the same is true with any of the restaurants around here.
“I remember when speaking with a volunteer group in Arthur's Hill, the Time Exchange, when they organise litter picks and they have found restaurant waste and found huge packets of chicken breast fillets, presumably they’re out of storage and had to put it somewhere.
“The issue isn’t the restaurants, it's how as a country as a whole are dealing with this waste problem.
“Our City Council wants to spend millions on a waste incinerator. If they have a good scheme of collecting waste from not just people's houses but from restaurants too; food waste could be used for energy.”
A spokesperson for Newcastle City Council said: “We believe the best way of tackling littering in the city is to engage positively with communities to ensure people understand their responsibilities and the potentially harmful impact it can have on the environment and wildlife.
“We, therefore, encourage people to ensure any litter they have is taken home or disposed of properly.
“While the majority of people do this, unfortunately, there are some who will continue to commit littering offences throughout the city. We will use our legal enforcement powers to tackle these issues in an effort to deter people from committing these crimes.”
A community group, Friends of Nuns Moor Park, care about their local park and place their efforts to clean it up.
Jo Ellis, a volunteer from Friends of Nuns Moor park, said: “We come down to the park, every week on a Monday and we go around and pick the litter up and then have a cup of tea.”
Sometimes there are two or three volunteers that come down to clean up but before COVID-19 there would be more volunteers reaching up to twelve people.
Jo said: “We have about 700 people on the Facebook page, and generally we say we are doing a litter pick, and we get quite a few people who appreciate it.”
The volunteers go around the park with litter pickers and bin bags and collect all sorts of waste, mainly cigarettes, food wastes, and wrappers.
Another volunteer, Gail said: “I like contributing to cleaning the park, and also find it quite satisfying and challenging too.
“Sometimes after the clean-up, I can feel a bit cross, because of what has been left lying around. But generally, it’s a positive feeling, that you have done something useful.
“We do get comments from people who see us and say we’re doing a good job but they’re probably the people who don’t throw litter.”
Jay Pitman says the volunteer litter picks aren't enough to keep the scourge of littering at bay.
He said: “Even though we have Greening Wingrove and Friends of Nuns Moor Park doing litter picks, it’s still not enough. When I was walking my daughter to school this morning it was appalling.
“Bin diving happens a lot in big community bins, the problems of fly-tipping have got worse over the years, and it isn’t just Arthur's Hill, but parts of Elswick have the same problems as well and it’s horrendous. And that section seems to be forgotten about more than Arthur’s Hill.”
Arthur's resident who didn't want to be named said the bins provided by the city council are not used fairly and many residents struggle with using the bins. They claim to have been victims of bin theft where replacement bins are chargeable so instead of buying their own, people have helped themselves to other people's.
They said: “People have stolen my blue bin four times, either because they don't want to ring the council and be in a queue on the phone to request for a blue bin or they don't know who they need to ask for a blue bin and continue stealing other bins.
"It's a city council responsibility to provide a blue bin to every single house,
"Now this month again my bin has been stolen and when I rang the city council for a bin, they said we will now charge you £25. Which made me upset. Because I am the only person who cares about recycling and there is no one on my street bothered about recycling.
"Now I have decided I will do the same as everyone by not recycling stuff in the blue bin and just using the normal bin (shared bins).”
Tay Pitman, argues that she doesn’t see much investment from the council for people in the area, in the long run, she elaborates:
“The majority of people do care, in the area however very few do get involved.
“Time Exchange, have observed, building vans coming and fly-tipping in the West End and then driving off, the area has been recognised by outsiders as a bit of a dumping ground.”
A Newcastle City Council spokesperson said: "Last October, Newcastle City Council launched a 12-month trial scheme to tackle rubbish dumping, bin raiding and fly-tipping around the Arthur’s Hill and Wingrove terraces.
"The scheme involved blocking off back lanes to through traffic, the reintroduction of individual bins for some homes, more CCTV to help with enforcement action, education for landlords, work with Northumbrian Water around pest control, and landlords being held accountable for the anti-social behaviour of their tenants."
The council is continuing to monitor and record the outcomes of the scheme to evaluate its impact and see whether it could be applied to a wider area.
Speaking when the scheme was launched, leader of Newcastle City Council and an Arthur’s Hill ward councillor Nick Forbes, said: “The majority of residents look after the area but a small minority cause misery for the rest of us and that means a daily battle with rubbish - It is clear we can’t go on like this.
"While as a council we send in our ‘clean up squad’ every day, have installed extra CCTV in the Arthur’s Hill and Wingrove terraces, prosecuted flytippers and have taken action after action, it’s clear when I’m out there on a weekly basis talking to residents that we’ve reached the stage where we’ve got to try something different.”
