The kerbside collection has got off to a good start with 20 tonnes of paper collected for recycling. Boosted by election literature? No figures were published for composting material but that has been bringing in substantial amounts in the Inverness area. A great start and some sanity coming into the proceedings now after years of perfectly good recyclable material being transported to the Longman Landfill and, more recently, further afield.
The Highland Council hopes to achieve a target of 18% of waste materials being reused by April 2006. That would be a start but we have a long way to go before we make serious inroads into turning around our ‘wasteful’ way of life. Many folk will remember the late Jack Ashford who campaigned for such a service long before the Highland Council was even conceived in the bureaucrats minds: he often would talk about the ecological sense such projects would make and the potential employment prospects.
The Highland Council hopes to achieve a target of 18% of waste materials being reused by April 2006. That would be a start but we have a long way to go before we make serious inroads into turning around our ‘wasteful’ way of life. Many folk will remember the late Jack Ashford who campaigned for such a service long before the Highland Council was even conceived in the bureaucrats minds: he often would talk about the ecological sense such projects would make and the potential employment prospects.
4 comments:
Hopefully people will continue to recycle their paper, steel and aluminium, and garden waste. Next on the agenda should be cardboard (they don't take stuff like packaging for teabags, etc - they leave it in the box), plastic and glass ( I know there are bottle banks but how many folk are too lazy to take their glass to them?). Then we can say we are truely recycling most of our waste.
Come on Highland Council - go for it!
I seem to recall that until about 8 or so ywars ago, Highland Council encouraged people to put paper to the various collection points becasue the world price for waste paper was quite high - but then it fell dramatically because of over-supply (from Russia and Scandinavia I believe), so it no longer was financially worthwhile to collect it. I assume the situation has reversed itself again
The real solution would be to have less packaging and newspapers, period and with the internet I buy far fewer dead-wood papers and magazines than I used to..
The upsurge in recycling has more to do with the targets set by the EU rather than financial returns for the waste products. Further information can be found at http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/waste/index.htm .
I suspect we wouldn’t be having this recycling scheme otherwise (or am I too cynical).
I totally agree with Bill about less packaging etc, and am dismayed when I see supermarkets etc selling things like neeps, broccoli and leeks covered in plastic! Why?
If and when I shop at supermarkets, it is their packaging which fills my bin. Therefore if supermarkets were forced to take back our empties would this not reduce the clothing they put upon food, most of which (fruit, veg) has quite a good natural cloak
Post a Comment