Information for Local Community Residents

The Problem

Every year, when thousands of student households move between properties or away from Leeds over the same couple of weeks during the summer, residential areas around the universities suffer from a massive amount of rubbish and chaos on the streets. This contributes to bad feeling between the student population and more permanent residents. The environment also suffers as a vast quantity of useful stuff ends up in landfill sites.

Factors which add to the problem

• Student households pack at the last minute so all rubbish is put out onto the streets at the same time.
• Scavengers go through bins and bags of rubbish for items to sell or for personal information i.e. on bills, bank statements etc.
• Housing contracts end at the same time so the majority of students move over the same 4-5 days.

Leave Leeds Tidy is here to help!

The Leave Leeds Tidy project's aim is to, through providing information and advice, reduce the impact of student change-over on the local community where students live, whilst also reducing the amount of useful items going to landfill.
Leave Leeds Tidy is a partnership which is coordinated by Leeds University Union’s Volunteering and Community office. Other partners are the University of Leeds, Leeds Met University Students' Union, UNIPOL, Leeds City Council and Inner NW Area Committee, and Hyde Park Neightbourhood Policing team.

What the Leave Leeds Tidy project will be doing...

Communicating

With students in halls, students already living in the community, and landlords about the services available to them when removing waste from properties.
We will also be delivering flyers to every property within our area and all up-to-date information will be available on this website.

Reuse and Recycle

Through a student-led volunteer project, Green Streets, a team of students will work to increase the amount of reusable items diverted from landfill. There will be ‘free shops’ held on and off campus where local residents and students can take any of the unwanted items. Last year, Green Streets successfully diverted over eight tonnes of reusable items from landfill, much of this was given to local charities and hostels.
The Change-over Map shows which zone your street is in, and the timetable on the Green Streets page will inform you when they will be collecting in your area.

Change-over Wardens will be out in the neighbourhoods

- A team of Change-over Wardens will be on the streets communicating with people and promoting the ‘Leave Leeds Tidy’ message. They will be alerting relevant agencies to any issues as they occur.

What the Leave Leeds Tidy partnership will be doing...

Litter Pick

CALM (Community Action Leeds Met) are doing a litter pick in the area around Headingley Mount on 9th and 10th May. For more info, or to join in, contact Jenine on email: J.Poyser@leedsmet.ac.uk.

Increasing the areas covered by Green Streets

They will be collecting four times rather than twice, and training volunteers to check electrical safety so more items can be collected.

Free Shops in the Community

Green Streets are running free shops in the community as well as on campus so more people can benefit.

Evaluation

Determining the success of the Leave Leeds Tidy project over student change-over.

What you can do to help...

1. Give your unwanted stuff to Green Streets


2. Come to a free shop and take something home - all free shops will be held between 10.00am and 3.00pm in the following locations:
   • Riley Smith Hall, Leeds University Union
   • Hawksworth Wood Children’s Centre
   • Oblong - TBC


3. Come to the Bargain Hunt, a tabletop sale at Hyde Park on 16th May. This project is organised by CALM. Contact Jenine to book a table if you have stuff to sell at email: J.Poyser@leedsmet.ac.uk


4. Volunteer to help Green Streets - There are loads of opportunities from driving a van, setting up a free shop to creating reusable fashion. Email volunteering@luu.leeds.ac.uk to find out more.


5. Look after your bins - Put your house number on your bin and make sure to put them out the night before and bring them in the day after to keep the streets tidy. If you don’t know what day is bin day in your area check out the Leeds City Council website at www.leeds.gov.uk.


6. Be a community contact for one of our teams of Change-over Wardens - The Change-over Wardens would benefit from local knowledge. If you live in one of the change-over areas and would like to help please contact us at tel: 0113 380 1329 and leave your name, street name, and phone number and we’ll be in touch.

More information from our partners

This is a massive project and we’re not going to kid you by saying change-over will pass by without you noticing. However, we are trying our best to make improvements. Here’s some information from our partners which might help to explain what’s going on.

Bin crews and tidying messy streets

Streetscene are not able to come and clear every messy street that’s reported immediately, but they do have a system in place to ensure that the whole area is cleared regularly and no street is left in a mess for more than eight days.
The system is that the problem change-over zones have been divided into areas which will take approximately a day to clear up. Extra crews have been employed over this time so that, on top of the regular collections, these extra crews are also working around the areas, one after the other and clearing them completely. This will be repeated until change-over has finished at the end of July.
If Streetscene were to react to every report of a messy street most of the working day would be wasted driving from one area to the next which would be less cost effective than this system. This way, streets which haven’t been reported, but are still a problem, are also cleared.

Environmental Action Team, fly tipping and bag slashing

The Environmental Action Team will be on the ground looking to prosecute bag slashers and fly tippers. We’re trying to avoid these problems by encouraging students and landlords to use bulky waste collection services and household waste sorting sites (see the Services page for more information about these). We’re also providing a shredding service for students to dispose of confidential paperwork in the students' unions and we’re asking that bags for Green Streets are left out after 9.30am on the collection morning. Look at the rest of the website to see the information we’re giving to students.
To report fly tipping, needles, etc call the council's Environmental Action Team on tel: 0113 222 4406.

Recycling and green bins over change-over

Contamination rates in green bins are usually very high over change-over. If more than 50% of the bins on a street have non-recyclable stuff in them it isn’t cost effective to send a recycling wagon and a general waste wagon to the same street so, the likelihood is that, the whole street’s green bins will go to landfill. For this reason, if you want to be sure the contents of your recycling bin goes to the right place, leave it on your property between 15th June and 12th July. After 12th July, put it out as normal.