Recycling our rubbish? We’d need a PhD in waste control

WE ARE urged to make greater efforts to sort our waste to aid local recycling schemes.

But no matter how well-intentioned we are, it is difficult to decide what goes where – we don’t all have a degree in waste management.

There are so many packages consisting of mixed materials. Milk or drink bottles with a coloured collar, multi-coloured containers, recyclable food trays with thin foil covers that are impossible to remove, paper food bags with a plastic lining and other wrappings with a stuck-on label.

Even if we could identify and separate everything, we would need a dozen bins by the back door.

It’s not good enough for manufacturers to say ‘check local guidelines’. Manufacturers are forcing the stuff on to us.

TONY CLARK, by email. ...I WORK in a supermarket express store and the number of so-called bags for life we sell is staggering. Some customers come in every day and always ask for a bag for the three items in their ‘meal deal’ lunch.

I ask why they don’t re-use the one they had the day before, and they tell me they throw old bags away because they are so cheap. If plastic bags cost at least ten times more, maybe people would start to re-use them..

Name and address supplied. ...WHO are we saving the planet for? I recycle all I can, but every day I see young people chucking plastic bottles and crisp packets on the street. EILEEN GARNER, address supplied.

Who’s the bogeyman?

JAMES Woods (Letters, yesterday) refers to Micheál Martin of Fianna Fáil ‘taking note’ of the ‘emerging threat’ of Sinn Fein.

It’s not today or yesterday the whole country of Ireland became aware of the ‘republican’ danger from SF and any potential electoral gains by them are a step towards a sinister future as the clued-in know well.

It is as if the IRA were not utterly defeated, to read Mr Woods’s take on the current state of play, and reference to Micheál Martin keeping Mary Lou McDonald ‘at arm’s length’ has nothing to do with any political clout she might seek, but everything to do with her puppet masters. Martin and the rest in the Dáil are weaklings yet Sinn Féin has the worrying aspect of the dangerous hidden hand always being at work. ROBERT SULLIVAN,

Bantry, Co. Cork.

Beating obesity

THE fundamental causes of obesity need to be looked into, recognised and acted upon.

Those on welfare benefits and low incomes who say they can’t afford fresh fruit and vegetables could be given vouchers for healthy food instead of money.

Schools need to provide cookery classes so pupils can learn how to make simple, healthy food.

C.D. FIELD, Mellieha, Malta.

Parking cost

WHEN my son received compensation for medical negligence at his birth resulting in severe cerebral palsy, we did not include the future cost of car parking in our anticipated losses. It was not so bad when there was a separate car park for disabled people at our hospital, but that has disappeared. We have to queue for an ordinary car park, which does not have headroom for taller vehicles. A lot of councils have brought in parking charges for disabled people. Perhaps an option would be free parking for the severely disabled.

Name and address supplied.

Must try harder

CHALLENGING readers to pick the celebrity, statesman and genius from their derogatory school report (Mail, yesterday) proved the saying: ‘Those that can, do; those that can’t, teach.’ TERRY McDONALD-DORMAN,

Co. Durham.