23 November: lunchtime waste & recycling walk
Interested in learning about waste and recycling on Cranfield University‘s campus? Unsure where bins for plastic or food waste are located? Confused by the variety of rubbish bins available?
Join us then for a special lunchtime walk organised by the walking society “Cranfield University Walks” and CSA Green Team (led by the newly elected student Green Officer Marie Lefebvre)
don’t be rubbish at rubbish
Walk itinerary:
Meet in front of Mitchell Hall.
Depart at 13.00 hours Walk duration: 1 hour There is no cost associated with attending this walk – just turn up. Have a look at this website on the day of the walk to see if there’s an update.
Our guide for this walk will be Grounds Manager Steve Watson. I have met up with him this week for a tour of the facilities. Whilst rummaging through various rubbish bins with wrongly allocated waste – from bins at Stringfellow Hall and Chilver Hall allocated for paper and cardboard only but still full of glass bottles to a rubbish bin at the Sports Hall designated for plastic bottles, yet full of paper tissue – I took the time to ask him a few questions.
Steve, tell us something about the planned walk.
This will be a lunchtime walk with a difference! A tour of the campus and the waste facilities will be spiced up by anecdotes about the history of the Cranfield University’s campus and its buildings – after all, I am based at the Estates Department*.
You know, I’m actually a secret Government Agent sent here on a covert mission to make sure that Cranfield University becomes the best campus in the country, if not in the world, for recycling! This walk is just one way of trying to achieve this. Do not, I repeat, do not expect the ordinary!
Tell us something about yourself.
I nearly died in 1984 and it sort of put things in perspective, well it would, wouldn’t it? It’s not every day you wake up in hospital with nurses, doctors and all your immediate family smiling at you. I quit a mundane tedious job, started doing basic qualifications, learnt to enjoy radical cutting edge theatre and poetry plus books in general. Close friends call me “Prof” as I usually have a book in my hand. Please keep this a secret!
What is your favourite walk?
On campus it’s a good two-mile walk to cover the areas that I’m responsible for so I listen to punk poet John Cooper Clark or Alan Moore on my Ipod whilst checking recycling bins, lawns and more!
Outside of campus, a walk round Manchester City Centre over the scene of the Peterloo Massacre where government troops on horseback and with swords waded into unarmed protestors back in 1819.
In London I would recommend a charming city walk through parts of London’s East End close to Spitalfields and Brick Lane. For example, Princelet St is a former residential house that became a synagogue with the chapel being built over the garden but invisible from the street and Dennis Severs House has been repopulated with Georgian artefacts and other effects that take you back in time!
I also have an interest in psychogeography which is about the way you appreciate landscapes as living storyboards of human influence. I then recommend quite simply a wonderful book called Edgelands by poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts. They authors explore and reflect upon that familiar, yet often unknown terrain, between city and countryside. These are the ‘edgelands’, found on the periphery of cities and larger towns; landscapes of wasteland, landfill sites, ruins, allotments and wild gardens, graffiti covered road bridges, sewage plants, woodlands and unexpected paths. So this book encourages you to take a walk with a difference – tramping round cityscapes or …edgelands!
Wow, thank you very much Steve. I look forward to the upcoming walk.
* KS – could not find a more suitable link to another Estates Department’s web page on Cranfield University’s external website
Unable to attend this walk on Wednesday 23 November? Another walk with Steve is planned for Wednesdays 30 November and 7 December. Check this website nearer to these dates for an update .
Cranfield University's Walks 