File:Endorsing and encouraging the "Third System".jpg

English: 30 March 2012. The purple bags await collection. They were left by street cleaners working for Veolia - Haringey's waste and recycling contractors. Black and other coloured bags are likely to have been dumped by local residents and traders, who assume the whole lot will get picked up.

For several years I've complained about this spot being used as an informal pick-up point for dumped rubbish.

What's now happening makes this problem worse. The purple bags act as a magnet for more rubbish. They implicitly endorse and approve the dumping.

This is what I've called the Third System.

For most residents the first system is the collection of waste from people's homes or businesses - from wheeled bins, recycling boxes, bags of garden and food waste, etc.

The second system is when residents bring waste to the Reuse and Recycling Centres or other "bring" sites such as bottle and paper banks.

Parallel to these, there's an informal third system - when waste is dumped on the street, in an alley, or corner of a park, etc at any time, day or night. With the expectation that it will be collected by someone. Perhaps the dumpers know Veolia will eventually remove it. Perhaps they have a vague idea that "the Council" will do it. Or maybe they don't give it any thought, but simply assume that an anonymous invisible 'them' will come round to clean the street.

Veolia's accumulated piles of purple bags encourage this informal Third System. We may as well have a large sign saying:   Please forget your wheelie bin.   Don't bother taking stuff to the Reuse & Recycling Centres.   Just leave it here. We'll collect it. Sooner or (probably) later.

Unless and until Haringey admits and finds effective ways to solve this problem - including changing people's behaviour - for the foreseeable future some people will continue to use our streets as dumping sites. _____________________________ § See where this picture was taken. § Examples of the Third System. § Examples of litter bins as pick-up points.

§ 'I' is for Imitation. Examples of how litter and dumping "models" public behaviour.