MARLIES: I always thought it was strange that Idealis collected the rubbish at its various student housing complexes. Students are mature adults, aren’t they? They can do it themselves. This is not a service you have in a regular rental property, is it? It hardly takes any effort: when you go out it is no trouble to take a garbage bag with you. And it saves money too – by just a couple of euros, but still. Given the new financial measures students face, every little helps. As far as I’m concerned, this Idealis waste collection service can be scrapped. It might take a bit of getting used to, but in a year’s time we’ll have forgotten that things were ever any different. JILLIS RESPONDS: To my mind it is not odd that a service like this one is offered to a large apartment block housing many residents with a lot of refuse. The residents pay for the service, it provides work and the end result is a tidy building. If you prefer, you can take your rubbish to the collection point, but it has to be said that the majority is very happy with this service. JILLIS: At Dijkgraaf and other places, the cleaning company collects each student unit’s garbage bags. This means that a couple of times a week, all the rubbish is collected in one go and disappears into the containers outside. In the first place, this is highly efficient, since it means that residents do not have to keep on using the lift just to take out one or two bags. Secondly, it gives the cleaners and the cleaning company an income, given that they charge 2.50 euros per resident per month – and that’s not cheap, I’d say. Finally, this arrangement ensures that Dijkgraaf generally looks reasonably neat and tidy. We have recently had a glimpse of what is likely to happen if Idealis goes ahead and forces the residents to do it themselves: a Neapolitan state of affairs and a rubbish-strewn complex. I don’t understand why Idealis wants to change things. The residents are happy to pay and it helps the cleaners make a living. What is wrong with that? MARLIES RESPONDS: A rubbish-strewn complex? Once everyone gets used to the new situation, I don’t think it will be as bad as all that. As for the cleaners, if you follow that line of reasoning you could end up outsourcing everything – cleaning the kitchens, for example.
Proposition: Dijkgraaf students should take their own household waste to a collection point
Marlies Bos (the left-wing fluffy type) and Jillis Herweijer (the right-wing Hooray Henry type) rarely see eye to eye on matters of politics, the environment or student life.
