Five weeks after refuse collectors in Birmingham, England, went on strike, volunteers have begun picking up trash and bringing it to the dump.
Trash collectors have been walking out for one to three hours a day since June 30, following an industrial dispute between unions and the Birmingham city council over proposed working conditions, The Guardian reports. As a result, a backlog of uncollected rubbish is littering the streets.
Strike action is scheduled to continue until September. The city is working to get the trash cleared, and reports it has cleared one-third of Birmingham’s streets. In the meantime, residents and community groups have begun taking matters into their own hands, transporting trash to area dump sites themselves.
