Council’s bin plan is flawed
Dear Editor,
To all those who I persuaded, convinced or bullied into recycling our waste when I spent the last eight years of my working life as the environmental manager of a local packaging firm, please accept my apologies, especially those who tried to tell me that it was all to do with money, not the environment.
Stirling Council has now proved you right.
In many of the training sessions that I gave, people tried to tell me that “once we were all in the habit of segregating our waste we would be charged for it”. How right you were.
I was brought up just after the Second World War. Nobody wasted anything. Everything was reused or recycled. Reduction wasn’t an option, there wasn’t enough to go round, let alone reduce!
I have for the past 70-plus years recycled anything I could, even plastic bottles have been cut down to produce “plant root trainers” rather than buying specially made ones. When at work, the plastic cups from the vending machine were used for plant pots rather than throwing them away.
Some people would say I am just a tight fisted Yorkshireman, and perhaps they are right, but what we have become as a consumer society is appalling. If it didn’t encourage you to use fuel I would suggest you go to Africa and see how they reuse everything from tyres for sandals to fridge casings for table tops.
In the 50s most people grew as much as they could if they had a garden, so would compost their green waste. All kitchen scraps and potato peelings were put in a separate bin for the local pig breeder to collect twice a week. All metal or rags were sold for pennies or a balloon for the children to the “rag and bone man”, nothing was wasted.
When I first started work in a glass manufacturing plant in St Helens, I asked why we didn’t collect all the bottles that were being wasted in the town. I was told that we could only use six per cent of cullet (broken up glass) in the mix for new bottles, and we had enough reject glass in house for this.
A couple of years later when I was sent on a training course to OI in the States, they were making glass bottle cars (for men’s deodorant) with 100 per cent cullet!! Shortly afterwards the bottle bank scheme was introduced.
Stirling Council has simply got its environmental policy wrong.
To put kitchen waste into a brown bin and then leave it for a month before collection is simply a health hazard.
To charge for garden waste (which they collect with food waste anyway from those who have paid their extra council tax) is totally counter-productive. It forces people to put extra waste in the grey bins, so the council pays higher landfill charges for the additional waste - or they have to drive to the waste station at Polmaise using additional fuel and causing greater pollution to the environment.
To have people driving round at 20mph in second gear in most cars is more polluting than 28-30mph in third gear. It may be OK for electric cars but as 97 per cent of the vehicles on the road are still petrol or diesel, the green councillors need to be educated.
What is the thinking behind the policies? Or is there any?
The council tax on our property is now 20 times what it was when we came to Scotland. Then the bins were emptied twice a week (and they were collected from the door, we didn’t have to put them out ourselves). We had public loos open all the time, not in libraries and shopping malls that only open during the day. The parks and street flowers were attended by to by the council, not volunteers who give up their time to fill in for the council’s neglect.
The council can waste money on new bins, which are not anything like as strong as the bins collected (and I believe sent for recycling!), but then reduce the service at the same time as adding additional staff to help people recycle more!!
I could go on but am fearful of becoming a second Victor Meldrew.
Les Slater, Dunblane