S’perrrrrtyyy, right?
And a lot clearer, since admittedly the last one was…
well…
boxey.
11 May
The beginning of something beautiful. Or, y’know, Birmingham Recycling figures and Visualisations.
Yay.
Birmingham and recycling and recycledness.
Thanks to Tableau, it’s in a kind of beautiful table.
I’ll write up a Birminghamrecycled article soon, and all will be beautiful.
8 May
Ok, so here’s the plan… Recycling in Birmingham and ass-kicking time.
Right. Stage one. A new FOI request. Keep it public on Whatdotheyknow and target the way in which the figures quoted previously are calculated; seperate the charity collections and actual household recycling figures, and make sure to avoid the commercial recycling figures (again, thank you to Lorna for pointing this out).
Stage Two. Sending it out to Birmingham City Council.
Stage Three. Starting an investigation on Helpmeinvestigate to try and get other people to send this FOI out to their council.
Stage Four. Create a Dipity Timeline charting when they are being sent out, when they are returning and any major developments or contrasts.
Stage Five, which probably should be before stage four. Create a map that charts which council districts have been covered by said FOI request and chart which one’s have (in the future) recieved a response.
Right. Game on recycling.
7 May
Visuali-time (Say it like eye, then it rhymes).
Ahhh recycling in Birmingham, time to be seen.
Except, for some bizarre reason, Many Eyes can’t understand my data set.
One of the simplest of data sets. I mean, come on, really? A column of values and a column of results?
And it stumbles you?
I’m probably doing everything wrong, let’s face it. But still. *sobs*
Just though I’d blog the.
*Ahem*. Process.
Help me if you can.
6 May
That Birmingham City Council FOI Part 2; Recycling figures and indeterminate terms…
A quote to start… shock horror, I know.
“Recycling is defined by the action and not by the material”
Oh-ho really Birmingham? So, does that mean…? Surely not…
“Donating clothes to a charity is a reuse activity as the waste will be reused in its original form, i.e. as clothing”
So. Basically. An indeterminable amount of ‘recycling’ recorded and counted across Birmingham, and a massive reason for the increased numbers, is people donating clothes to charity. I’ll elaborate, with more from the FOI;
“Recycling is basically putting the material through a process which reuses it instead of using more virgin materials to make a product which may be the same as or different from the original product (e.g. recycling metal from food cans into cars)”
I was misinformed, rather than believe that Birmingham City Council are being sneaky.
No wonder recycling rates have soared.
I, as a member of the public and an enviromental journalist didn’t know about this, so how can the public?
They can’t even see the statistics at all.
I think this is bad times.
More to come.
3 May
Birmingham City Council and Recycling Part 1; The stats…
That’s right, it’s a multi-parter.
Aren’t I just the worst?
Right, this FOI has given me plenty to talk about and this response was well recieved and, thankfully, detailed.
And first of all, to put it simply, I’m just going to throw you the stats.
Now, take these at face value, because in this week’s twisty turny edition of… ben… you’ll find out that recycling statistics are really not all they seem.
|
2000/01 |
7.43% |
2005/06 |
17.03% |
|
2001/02 |
8.37% |
2006/07 |
18.39% |
|
2002/03 |
10.74% |
2007/08 |
26.61% |
|
2003/04 |
12.93% |
2008/09 |
30.59% |
|
2004/05 |
14.95% |
2009/10 |
32.00% (Provisional) |
Sorry about the two-tiered layout. I know, it sucks, and I’ll fix it soon, but, for now, goggle at it’s wonderment.
Quadrupled rate in 10 years is always good, there are no complaints here.
Part 2 is here!
29 Apr
Right then, guys, girls… machines… It’s FOI time. Ish.
The FOI came back, so, basically, win.
However, amongst all the other work I’m stuck doing, it may take a while to decipher the wee thing, so patience childrens.
However, s’of note that they were on-time, and didn’t even come close to attempting to charge me, which I appreciate whole-heartedly.
There are stats to fondle into interesting visualisations and interactive, over-active forms of news, so that’s there to look forward to as well.
But, for now, follow that ol’ link up top to check out the FOI, and, for now, peace out.
26 Apr
Damn slow replies; the life of a (ish) journalist ‘eyyyy?
My FOI to good ol’ Birmingham City Council was sent off 31st March and was ‘acknowledged’ (pah) on 1st April, so a reply had better be back by the 29th (3 days time for you lazy ‘uns) or i’ll kick up some kinda storm.
And along with that, crazy politics-planning has gone, well, badly.
Having an advantage isn’t at advantageous as it should be, even with an infamous Documentally being nudged into involvement; s’getting late in the week now and horribly, responses from anywhere never ever seem to come through; damn you undisclosed venue.
*shakes undisclosed fist*
Hopefully, more awesome interactive and imaginative magic will come through when some stats come through from the council later this week, or, if worst comes to worst, we’ll have another dagger to jam into the spine of our favourite local council ^^!
Laters journalism haters.
23 Apr
Oh sneaky sneaky Harrow… stealthing towards the debates…
Might have somehow led myself into a situation where I know ahead of time where the next Prime Ministerial Debate is…
And can try and somehow force Birmingham Recycled, and the elections section, into a position to make the most of it.
If any of you guys see it, tell me, and imma see what I can do…
But for now, Ben needs to get his stealth on…
22 Apr
From quiet times to better times… greenhouse emissions fall…
And so has my rate of blog spamming, so apologies green-fans.
But, for now s’all about the good news.
Greenhouse gases, across all the industrialised nations, fell by 2.2% over 2008.
The list of the greenhouse gas emissions are listed here on Reuters, but I’ll make a summary later.
Since 1990, the changes for Britain are dramatic, with a 18% drop, and a 1.9% drop over that measured 2008 period; not bad for us, actually.
I’ll try and make this my first piece of visualisation work for online journalism and Birmingham Recycled, and we’ll see how it looks when I make my beautifully messy mind and words fall out into images.
With regards to BRinvestigates, well, we have to wait for the council to be lovely and reply to FOIs.
But, watch out, I might attack the take on EIR’s as my next investigative project, so watch this space….
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