Hammersmith and Fulham council are getting serious about litter bugs after the manager of a Hammersmith Subway franchise and eleven smokers were fined for fly-tipping.
Vishal Kakar, owner of Subway in King Street, was fined a total of £2,225 after pleading guilty at Hammersmith Magistrates Court on March 4 to three offences of unauthorised disposal of rubbish and failing to carry out his duty of care by not disposing of the rubbish properly.
In April and May, 2012 and again in February last year, street scene enforcement officers carrying out routine inspections of King Street found black bin bags left outside the shop on the pavement.
The bags were full of cardboard boxes, drinks cups, used Subway sandwich wrappers with an array of left-over vegetables, napkins, wrappers, bread and cookies.
Filthy smokers did not get away with dropping their cigarette butts on the street outside Shepherds Bush and Hammersmith tube stations, with 11 of them being fined a total of £4,045 between them in February. One Acton resident, Trevor Grant of Birkbeck Road, was also sentenced to a conditional discharge for six months.
The council has installed 38 new dual recycling and rubbish bins with ashtrays all along King Street in an attempt to encourage people to dispose of their rubbish and cigarette butts correctly.
Items such as crisp packets, sweet wrappers, tissues and dirty food packaging should be placed in the waste section of the litter bin so they do not contaminate the lean and dry recycling.
Contamination costs the council seven times as much to dispose of than normal, correct recycling. If the bins prove successful, they could be rolled out across the borough.
