Pub staff forced to pitch in and clear mess

THE scale of the waste piling up in Edinburgh has forced charities and businesses to take matters into their own hands and mount a makeshift clean-up operation.

One pub worker said he had resorted to clearing the mess up himself.

James David Lee, who works at Biddy Mulligan’s pub in the Grassmarket, said even street performers had been driven away – at the height of the Festival.

He said: ‘It’s got so bad now and it’s outside our work so we are cleaning it up. We take pride in our work and we don’t like to see the outside of our pub looking like this. Something we have seen is the disappearance of performers due to the bins overflowing. Normally the Grassmarket would be full of performers and jugglers.’

Fellow bar worker Megan Alexander added: ‘I’m finding this disgusting work. It’s certainly not our job. I feel a bit upset about it all. Our neighbour who runs an ice-cream shop has had to close due to the rubbish. His queue is normally way down the Grassmarket. It’s terrible he’s had to close due to the bins.’

Mr Lee and Miss Alexander said they had bagged up all rubbish outside the pub in the hope their private refuse collection company would take it away.

Meanwhile, a Christian group has said it will be putting 30 trade bins in five locations across Edinburgh city centre to be filled by its volunteers. A spokesman for the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church said: ‘We are working with a local contractor with permission from Edinburgh City Council and, once filled, the bins will be collected and the waste disposed of and the bins replaced.’

GMB Scotland said the union ‘would much rather these volunteers back our members’ struggle for a pay increase that confronts this cost-of-living crisis, so we can tackle the spread of working poverty among Scotland’s key workers’.