Waste concerns after Notting Hill Carnival

Every August Bank Holiday, one of the trendiest parts of London comes to a standstill in honour of Carnival weekend. But with the Notting Hill Carnival getting bigger and rowdier every year, organisers are presented with the massive headache of a clean up operation on an unprecedented scale.

Facts and figures

The worldwide fame of the Notting Hill Carnival means it attracts a lot of revellers. Year on year, the numbers rise and this year’s figures are quite astounding:

• an estimated 2 million people
• 7,000 police officers
• 300 food stalls selling in excess of five tons of food
• 70 stages
• 3.5-mile long parade

Rubbish

The exponential rise in visitor numbers this year meant the Notting Hill Carnival was messier than ever before, and visitors were responsible for creating over 320 tonnes of rubbish.

And because the Carnival is a celebration of Caribbean foods, music and dance, the types of rubbish  discarded included food, food packaging, drinks cans and bottles, decorations which fell from the dancers costumes (though sometimes whole costumes have been abandoned for the street cleaners to deal with), as well as posters and flyers.

The clear up

Amazingly, despite the extraordinary amount of rubbish thrown onto the streets, the clean up was finished by 3 am on Tuesday morning. More than 200 people worked through the night, loading the rubbish into more than 30 refuse trucks. The streets were then washed down by a large motorway vehicle so the residents of Notting Hill – who have become more and more fed up with the effects of the Carnival on their lives – could wake up to ‘normality’.

Westminster City Council will not allow all that waste to go to landfill. After the incredible mountain of it has been separated for recycling, any remaining rubbish will be converted to green energy which is expected to generate around 97,200kWh of electricity and 19,600kWh of heat for London homes.
If you’re planning your own carnival or festival – large or small – you will need to organise an efficient cleanup operation. Contact us on 01708 550641 to discuss the best and most cost effective way forward.