Eco ChurcH
Eco Blog by Pat Oliver (Member of our church)
Hello fellow Ecowarriors.
Well, I am one in my head!! And I really try hard but as I was offloading my Tetrapacs (fruit juice, Long Life milk containers etc) into the container the other day, alongside containers for tin foil, batteries, glass, paper, clothes, shoes etc a thought popped into my mind. How do I do all this without using my car which is not electric or hybrid?
Ok, perhaps by bicycle or bus but realistically I rely on the doorstep collections which in my area are pretty reliable but actually very limited. The rubbish bag is never even half full but the contents are nearly always the type of plastic bags or containers that aren’t recycled here plus some food waste (mostly vegetable based) that I can’t compost because of the rat problem locally. I’m doing my best …or am I?!
As I have moved about the country all of the waste/recycling systems have been very different in different local authority areas so why don’t we have just one national system which has got to be less confusing and more efficient? When a group of us from Trinity go to visit the Veolia Energy Recovery Centre in Marchwood in a couple of weeks I can ask that question. Here non-recyclable waste is burned and creates electricity for nearby homes and the docks and the emissions are controlled and measured. Really! Watch this space for further details!
In Oxfordshire, admittedly in wheelie bins, just about everything that has a triangular recycle logo on it can be put in the bin, all in a muddle together, plus paper and card and the sorting is done elsewhere. In Lancashire the paper and card were separate but all else mixed in bins apart from glass so it was a bit of a shock when we got to Hampshire! and especially in the New Forest District. Admittedly, now here, the bags are biodegradeable and garden owners can pay for green waste collections (recently from canvas bags to wheelie bins) so reducing large numbers of individual car trips to a waste centre. My point is that in a small country it should be possible to have one, more efficient system, all over.
As eco warriors why aren’t we asking for that? Why aren’t I writing letters to my MP? Why aren’t we … could we as a group?