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Kingston Association for the Blind works with Veolia to support vision impaired residents to make bins accessible

Odette Batterel, CEO of Kingston Association for the Blind tells us about this project. The project started a couple of years ago when I went to an employment event in the Kingston Town Hall. I came up to a stall held by the Climate Change Team and got talking to Terezie Wickenden the program officer. She introduced the upcoming Green Grant the council was offering to charities to do environmental projects. We talked about how our blind community could contribute toward the net zero target of Kingston Upon Thames.

A lady in a high vis vest with a lady who has a guide dog in a garden with a row of bins.

It dawned on me that although there were some universal conventions, I did not know of any regarding accessible recycling. There was a bump on number 5 on keypads, the talking news had a corner cut to identify which side is the return address, there is a twirling cone to let you  know when the green man lights up at a pedestrian crossing , but how does a blind person know in which bin goes the plastics or the glass bottles?

So I asked  a couple of National Sightloss charities, friends and their members. It seemed that no one had a system. A few people had devised their own way of doing it. The RNIB had braille stickers but  only very few people read Braille and I was told they fall off very quickly. We also did a survey and asked 60 of our members how they recycled their household rubbish and most said they asked a family member to do it.

I then met with Veolia who is a firm that collects and recycles household rubbish in Kingston and in a few other boroughs in London. They said they had drilled holes in the past for a couple of blind residents but they did not know of any universal convention either. So after a few meetings and emails they came up with the idea of drilling holes on the side of the lid, so rain water would not get in the bin and it would be easy to find.

In August, Veolia did a first trial. They brought 3 bins into the office and we were able to ask our members to come and feel them. The feedback was that they were too small and too close to each other. So back to the drawing board. While they were testing the holes, our members also had the opportunity to give some more feedback to Veolia on how challenging in became when bins were left on the pavements on collection days. This led  to us doing a visual awareness workshop with the Veolia staff to make them more aware of the impact this had on the visually impaired residents.

Members in turn also learnt about assisted collection where the residents do not have to bring their bins out themselves. They are brought out and put back on collection days. However, we found out that the assistance for ordinary rubbish was not linked to the garden waste and that you had to register for assistance separately, so it was a learning day for everyone.

We are also working to make recycling information accessible, as in many places it is printed on leaflets or on websites with pictures and diagrams and only a few words.

We now have our first set of members who have had their bins drilled and we will be asking them for their feedback, how it makes them feel to be able to contribute to the Save the Planet movement.

A hand touching the corner of a bin which has 4 holes drilled into it.

Here is our new convention:

• Refuse: 1 hole
• Recycling: 2 holes
• Paper: 3 holes
• Garden (if applicable): 4 holes

We hope  that in the future Veolia will have the option for blind residents and anyone else who might need it, like someone who is color blind, to register for holes to be drilled, That will be included in the home assessment: “do you need accessible bins” ,

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