05 December, 2007

Environmental Issues - Canary Wharf

Canary Wharf Tube
Every morning the Jubilee Line and the DLR chew up and then disgorge well in excess of 100,000 commuters (in the space of about an hour) onto the 14.1 million square feet of office that loom over the 97-odd acres of flood plain collectively known as "Canary Wharf"...(called this because historically this area was predominantly used as a dock for imports from the Canary Islands)...I could stop there, having already gifted you at least four interesting facts about this part of London with which to impress your friends and family, however, this statistical information has been presented to you to highlight a real potential logistical problem...and one that the London Underground addresses by name...

Each morning, an announcement is on loop at Canary Wharf station "Please do not discard your Metro Newspapers anywhere on the station or escalators, please carry them with you and use the bins provided", you don't get that at any other underground station I have visited (and it's worse if any freebies or leaflets are being given away, they especially are fair game for escalator dumping), but if you consider *most* commuters *will* pick up a Metro (or buy another morning paper), this is a colossal amount of paper waste ending up potentially dumped at the doorstep of Canary Wharf estate management -every day- and you know what? Apart from in the back of the dedicated (electrically powered) recycling carts -
Mini Electric Recycling car
- or the recycling bins -
Recycling Bin - Full of Metro
- there isn't a stray copy of Metro anywhere in sight...so someone has actually got something rather perfectly right...It's easy to always complain about things that go wrong, but in this case some congratulations are in order, so jolly well done to Canary Wharf... ;)

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