23rd Jul 2007

Recycling is good for you!

St Albans Review's editorial about doorstep recycling was misleading and inaccurate.

The UK urgently needs to get up to the 60% recycling rates that other countries achieve. 80% of household waste could be recycled or composted, and Friends of the Earth says we should aim for 75% by 2015.

Alternate week collection (AWC) of the kind planned for St Albans district does increase recycling rates. That is the experience of every area in this country that has tried it. The idea was not "hatched by moronic nincompoops who just want to stop our landfill sites from continuing to work at full to overflowing" (Review, July 18). It is a proven way to increase recycling, which is one of the easiest ways for people to help the environment, reduce the extraction of natural resources, and fight climate change.

In any case, as the Review implied, landfill is not working, so we have to find alternatives. There is very little evidence that AWC significantly increases fly-tipping. And if food waste is collected weekly from wheeled bins instead of loose bags there should be less hygiene problems, not more.

The paper was wrong to say that AWC collections will be fortnightly, not weekly. There will be a collection of recyclables every week, alternating 'dry' and 'compostable', and kitchen waste will be collected every week. It is only the remainder, things like plastic packaging, that will be collected fortnightly.

Our council, however, could be doing a better job of organising the move to AWC.

First, it is planning to introduce the change in the summertime. Teething problems mean it's always better to start in the autumn or early winter, to avoid missed collections sitting around in the sun.

Second, there needs to be much more publicity explaining what's happening. This will be a big change and people are concerned about it.

Third, there should be more frequent collections for smaller houses. The new bins will need a certain amount of storage space and access that some houses in the district simply don't have. Experience shows that AWC works best when it is adapted to the circumstances of the area.

Fourth, there needs to be a parallel promotion of home composting, with free equipment for those with the space. Much better to compost your own garden and kitchen waste than to have it collected in lorries. It would also save money, and provides compost too!

Fifth, there needs to be proper financial support for the use of real nappies. A subsidised nappy laundry service provides a win-win situation, saving costs of landfill, waste collection, home energy and shopping, and all the resultant CO2 and methane emissions.

Finally, recycling needs to be part of a strategy to 'reduce, re-use, repair and recycle'. Recycling is actually the least energy-efficient element of those four - better to reduce the amount of waste we create in the first place than have it collected for recycling.

Rather than publishing ill-informed attacks on recycling, maybe local newspapers could champion a cause that brings benefits to residents, council tax payers and the environment in general. And if the Review's editor finds his recycling bin is overflowing, perhaps he could help himself and the rest of us by axing the Review's property section, which creates 500 tonnes of waste paper every year.