Money spent up, recycling down: another Lib Dem failure

So much for the Lib Dem 'plan' to increase Bristol's recycling rate to 50%. They banged on about this so much (see policy six in their 'six to fix') but have not delivered - and it looks like there are lessons to learn for all who want higher recycling rates about how to get larger numbers of the public onside.

BRISTOL City Council spent £45,000 hiring "waste doctors" to encourage more people to recycle but they appear to have had the opposite effect.

The "Recycling For All" pilot scheme was launched last September with two officers monitoring the rubbish produced by 3,275 homes in the city.

But rather than improve recycling rates the statistics show fewer people recycled their food, bottles and papers after the pilot than before.

Recycling For All was one of four projects the waste doctors were involved in.

If they found people were not recycling, the officers would send letters advising them how they could.

They also had the power to issue a £75 fixed penalty fine or begin court proceedings that could result in fines of up to £1,000 if people continued to refuse to recycle.

The idea was to drive Bristol's already impressive recycling rate of 39 per cent up – one of the highest in the country – even further.

The council had hoped a successful pilot could be expanded across the city, pushing the recycling rate up to 50 per cent.

But far from improving performance, results from the pilot show recycling rates dropped by an average of 10 per cent – and in some parts of the city by as much as 30 per cent...

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/WASTE-TIME/article-3330115-detail/article.html

Green tips on the theme of clothes

Copy of a short article to be published in the local newsletter/magazine
'Knowledge', part of the regular 'Green Scene' series I write. This one's on the theme of clothes - topical give my recent blog entry on rising food and clothes prices the other day.

Money-saving, no cost or low cost ideas for being green:

*buy second-hand and where affordable buy clothes made from natural and ecological or recycled materials

*put old clothes to new uses and turn into draft excluders, cleaning rags, a patchwork quilt/blanket, furniture stuffing...

*take old clothes to charity shops and good quality recycling schemes like Oxfam, Scope

*think through what you are buying: Do you really need it? Will the item last well?

*don’t wash clothes at 50 degrees, cut the temperature down to 40 or 30 degrees – some detergents are designed to clean well at even 15 degrees

*think about whether what you are buying has been made by oppressed, abused, extreme low paid, slave and/or child labour – ask shops questions and if they don’t satisfy you then buy elsewhere

Bristol to object to Severnside mass incinerator

As Cllr Charlie Bolton reports on his blog, Bristol City Council has decided to object to the mass incinerator proposed for Severnside, S. Glos. This is great. I drafted and sent a statement (see below) for the Greens, urging the relevant Bristol City Council planning committee to send an objection to the planning application and to the application for an environmental permit to operate.

Air pollution from smoke, gases and ash from incinerators must be considered as should any heavy metals left in the ash. The cumulative air pollution impacts on people’s health, already suffering in this area, and on the health of nearby designated sites is unsustainable. S Glos should not grant planning permission and the Environment Agency should not give an operating permit to any mass incineration of waste on Severnside – this area is already heavily polluted, impacting on both human and environmental health.

Consider the effects of pollution from this area, added to the pollution already emitted, on the Severn Natura 2000 Marine site. This area was selected against rigorous scientific criteria to protect the most threatened and important species and habitats in Europe. The site is of international significance (UN RAMSAR listed, up to 100,000 birds over-winter there, Slimbridge is just upstream). It is very close to the incinerator site and is protected with tough limits for nutrient nitrogen deposition.

Because of the traffic on the M5 and the other polluting activities already in the area cumulative air pollution is already a real problem. It is our understanding that only insignificant levels of nutrient nitrogen could be permitted by the Environment Agency ie less than 1% of the critical load.

I'm opposed to mass incineration of rubbish because it encourages more waste. Incinerators need a regular feed of rubbish and authorities that have chosen incineration have correspondingly low recycling rates – this incinerator undermines waste reduction, minimisation, reuse and recycling. It offers massive over-capacity for waste facilities in Avonmouth. It runs counter to sustainable waste strategies. Contracts also tend to be very long (at least 25 years), meaning that we will have no way to adapt positively to changes in the waste make-up and volume.

In our view this mass incinerator is not part of a properly considered and appraised local/regional strategy which both acknowledges and acts on the fact that waste reduction, reuse and recycling saves far more energy than is generated by burning waste. Making fewer new things from raw materials is what makes most environmental sense because stocks of raw materials are finite. We should be doing all we can to recover and recycle valuable materials from our rubbish, rather than turn these materials into a ‘fuel’.

Incineration reduces waste to around 40% by weight, 25% by volume. It does not make waste disappear - much of the toxic ash still needs to be disposed of to hazardous landfill. Incineration does not generate renewable energy – burning plastic just substitutes one fossil fuel for another.

Two new web resources for biofuels & incineration...

From Jane Stevenson: The new "Action for Sustainable Energy in Bristol" campaign site has background info on the proposed biofuel plant in Bristol, and details of how to object to its planning application:

http://www.acseb.co.uk/

The hearing for the biofuel plant application has been moved to 24 February, so there is still some time to register your objections.

Avonmouth is under seige from a raft of planning applications - 2 biomass power stations, 1 biofuel power plant and 2 incinerators. While both incinerators are planned for Avonmouth, one falls in the Bristol authority area, and the other in South Gloucestershire. Either of them, ON THEIR OWN, would delivery more additional waste capacity in the region, than we need to process our own waste - and that's leaving aside the fact that incineration is grossly inefficient in terms of recovering the maximum amount of energy from our waste. The applications seem designed to bring imported waste into the region, from areas where they haven't got their recycling act together.

Deadlines for objections are now quite tight, and seem to be a bit of a moving target. Current advice is to get your objections registered in January.
http://www.bambi-network.org.uk/pages/youdo.php

In praise of...tap water

Drinking tap water cuts both your bills and your carbon footprint - and more of us should be drinking it wherever we are, including in restaurants, at work and at home! Just look at these killer facts (provided by Wessex Water's website):

*Bottled water costs 500 times more than tap water.

*One in five people are too embarrassed to ask for tap water in a restaurant.

*The average person drinks 37.6 litres of bottled water each year.

*2.7 million tonnes of plastic are used to bottle water each year.

*22 million tonnes of bottled water are transferred from country to country each year.

*Three out of four plastic water bottles are still not recycled.

*Bottled water has a carbon footprint up to 300 times higher than tap water.

Ask three questions, get zero answers!! A perfect combination of ignorance and dismissiveness!!

I've been investigating the environmental decision making surrounding the introduction of corn starch bags into Bristol's food waste recycling system for a while. Recently I put the three questions below to the Cabinet. I received just one response - and that did not give the information requested!

The figures given by Cllr Hopkins are certainly not carbon footprint figures and I am still looking into what they actually imply. He completely ignores my second question about other environmental impacts (carbon footprints make up less than half the total environmental impact of a product). He also completely ignores my third question which asks about economic as well as environmental assessment. Despite not backing anything he says with anything like full and accurate facts Cllr Hopkins still asserts 'this shows that there will be an overall positive impact to the environment.'!! A perfect combination of ignorance and dismissiveness.

C3. Glenn Vowles to ask Gary Hopkins, Executive Member for Environment and Community Safety

Environmental decision making and corn starch bags

In a debate on Cllr Bolton’s blog I said ‘…the decision on the [corn starch] bags has been taken without full information being sought! This is irrational. Environmental decision making should be put on a firm evidence-based process. This has not been done by any party running the council…’ to which you Cllr Hopkins replied ‘I do not base my judgements on guesses but on evidence’. My subsequent request for data on the total environmental impacts of the corn starch bags in this debate was not replied to and so I doubt that full information has in fact been sought.

Q1. What figures does the council have for the carbon footprint of these corn starch bags, in order to assess whether they more than make up for their carbon cost?

Q2. What figures does the council have for any other environmental costs the corn starch bags may have eg water footprint, land take, biodiversity impacts?

Q3. Can you outline if/how you intend to quantitatively and fully assess the net effects of corn starch bag introduction: on the environment; on the economics of waste management for Bristol?

C3. Reply:
For the plans we have regarding potential roll out of corn starch liners across Bristol, the environmental costs of liner production is summarised as:
- 45t of bags will need to divert 540t - 1125t of organic waste from landfill to make the CO2 equivalent net saving, which will require approximately 3% increase in organic recycling. This is a very realistic estimate.

In summary this shows that there will be an overall positive impact to the environment.

For clarity, this calculation does not take into account the further expected reduction in waste arisings, as previous evidence has shown that when residents start recycling food waste for the first time, they are surprised at the amount they throw away which tends to make them reduce their waste in the future.

Sustainable Communities Act successes

I'm very pleased to have received the email below today showing that two of the 22 proposals I submitted to Bristol City Council's Sustainable Communities Act process have been successful, passing the various tests (see the proposals described after the email). It will be very interesting to see what the Local Govt Association make of them.

Dear Ms White and Mr Vowles,

I'm writing to let you know that following decision at the Council's Cabinet meeting last night. I am pleased to say your joint proposal regarding reducing commercial and industrial waste and the seprate one submitted by you individally Mr Vowles on statutory biodiversity/ecofootprint data in planning applications have been submitted to the Local Government Association Selector Panel today.

We would like to thank you for your input to this process so far and will let you know as soon as we have further information from the LGA on the progress of these and other proposals the Council has submitted.

Kind regards,
Deborah

Deborah Kinghorn
Policy Officer
Deputy Chief Executive's Unit
Bristol City Council
0117 92 22792

1.The proposal is to establish statutory biodiversity/eco footprint data in planning applications.

Submission of ‘before and after’ biodiversity and eco-footprint data to be a compulsory part of all planning applications – the data to be a statutory consideration for all planning committees.

The proposal would improve the eco-footprint of new development. In theory it should lead to an increase in resource supporting biodiversity, reduce the contribution new development has on climate change, might boost the local economy through local supply, improve the resource efficiency of the development.

People submitting planning applications for new development would need guidance on how to undertake this and what would be required. Therefore Officers and Members of the Council would also need training and guidance in order to implement this proposal successfully.
It would require a change in legislation to become mandatory.

2.Reduce commercial and industrial waste.

Give local authorities the responsibility for managing all commercial and industrial waste to ensure that the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle can be applied to commercial and industrial waste as well as municipal waste.

If local authorities are given this responsibility, establish a national indicator for waste minimisation that covers commercial and municipal sectors.

Municipal waste only accounts for 15% waste and Commercial and Industrial accounts for 39% with construction and demolition 46%. (WEP Joint waste strategy paper)

There is currently little influence on the commercial and industrial sector to minimise waste through the three Rs , reduce, reuse, and recycle. The main influence is the financial cost which is not prohibitive enough to encourage minimisation of waste to landfill.

If local authorities are responsible for the whole waste stream, it will enable waste to be tackled in a more joined up way and with more regard for the environment. Commercial and Industrial waste tends to have fewer waste streams and can often be easily recycled.

Questions to Council's Cabinet on: hedgerow loss; green belt; environmental decision making

Questions to be put to the Bristol City Council Cabinet meeting of 25 June, for the attention of Cllr Gary Hopkins:

*Hedgerow loss due to Cycle Houses
Plans for the development of ‘cycle houses’ on the former Elizabeth Shaw Chocolate Factory site have been granted planning permission. The development would, unless modified, mean the destruction of approximately 150 metres of mature hawthorn hedgerow. Hedgerows are of high landscape and conservation value. They add diversity to and are a traditional feature of the landscape. They provide foraging, roosting and nesting sites for birds. They are rich in animal and plant species (around 500 vascular plant species are found in UK hedgerows). They are home to many types of insect, mollusc, spider and small animal. They act as wildlife corridors allowing flora and fauna, including birds, foxes, badgers, mice and other small mammals, beetles and molluscs, routes for dispersal from remnant islands of habitat through an increasingly hostile landscape.

1.Can you confirm that Bristol City Council has sold to the developers a plot of land on/adjacent to the Bristol to Bath Railway Path that includes the 150 metre (approx) hedgerow referred to and that the Liberal Democrat administration authorised this sale?

2. Did the Bristol Liberal Democratic Party at any time in the last year appeal to the developers to modify their cycle house plans so that hedgerow loss was avoided?

*Development on green belt land
1.Should large scale development be permitted on green belt land around Bristol, whether the development impinges on green belt in whole or part?

2.If development is permitted on green belt land should the developers plans and designs be required to compensate as much as is practically possible for all the environmental impacts they cause eg through maximising the use of green design, green technology and green schemes?

*Environmental decision making and corn starch bags
In a debate on Cllr Bolton’s blog I said ‘…the decision on the [corn starch] bags has been taken without full information being sought! This is irrational. Environmental decision making should be put on a firm evidence-based process. This has not been done by any party running the council…’ to which you Cllr Hopkins replied ‘I do not base my judgements on guesses but on evidence’. My subsequent request for data on the total environmental impacts of the corn starch bags in this debate was not replied to and so I doubt that full information has in fact been sought.

1. What figures does the council have for the carbon footprint of these corn starch bags, in order to assess whether they more than make up for their carbon cost?

2. What figures does the council have for any other environmental costs the corn starch bags may have eg water footprint, land take, biodiversity impacts...?

3.Can you outline if/how you intend to quantitatively and fully assess the net effects of corn starch bag introduction: on the environment; on the economics of waste management for Bristol?

Corn starch bag introduction: poor environmental decision making

Councillor Gary Hopkins introduction of corn starch plastic bags free to all households that want them is a waste of £100,000 per year of our council taxes and is poor environmental decision making. I sympathise with many of the sentiments expressed by letter writers Bernard Seward, Ambrose Porter and Malcolm Leslie (Feedback: Corn Starch Bags, Post, April 28).

It makes little economic sense to have the council bearing the cost of introducing a manufactured bio-plastic bag into a recycling system where the vast majority of Bristol's public are already managing perfectly well wrapping their food waste in a free, otherwise waste, product. They use newspaper, other waste paper or empty cereal packets etc.

Its makes little environmental sense either, as the bags increase the total environmental impact of the recycling system itself. Even if the bags in isolation are carbon neutral, the farming of the corn to get the starch and the manufacturing and transport of the bags certainly are not. Additionally, land used to grow corn for the bags is land that could be growing food for people! Land may even be cleared to grow the corn, at a cost to wildlife.

Its worrying that environmental decisions like this aren't approached rationally ie by gathering full information and assessing it before deciding. Greens have persistently requested that data on total bag environmental impact should be gathered before their possible introduction. No attempt was made at getting even broad estimates. Poor and incorrect responses were given to questions. One council official claimed, with no supporting evidence whatsoever, that because the bags were made from biomass (material from living origins) they were carbon neutral -mahogany doors are made from biomass but no-one would suggest that its carbon neutral to cut down and process rainforest trees to get them!!

The idea of the bags is to get more people recycling food scraps, cutting council waste costs and cutting environmental impacts. However, since the total environmental impact of bag introduction has not been established we will not be able to calculate whether any environmental gains made from increased recycling fully compensate for the environmental cost of making the bags. Even if they did its a very inefficient and expensive way to cut impacts - £100,000 per year more for energy saving, getting people out of cars and onto bikes or getting people to grow some of their own food, can easily be shown as far better options. Less chance of 'green' publicity and kudos for Cllr Hopkins with these options perhaps?? Or is this all much more about saving money alone??

Green energy/waste plans in and around Bristol

Big money for green energy and waste management?

Things are moving in the renewable energy and recycling field, including locally with projects worth a possible £2bn in and around the Avonmouth area of Bristol. These would apparently be paid for by commercial investors and could, if the local, regional and particularly the national energy and waste strategies and mix of technologies is right, contribute towards making Bristol much greener – as well as creating many jobs. At this stage though the £2 billion investment figure is somewhat speculative, though may turn out to be a reasonable estimate from those in the know!

The Bristol's Environmental Technology and Services Sector project (BETS) established about three years ago to really get environmental technologies and services going in Bristol and the surrounding area are of course intimately involved in all this. After all BETS are all about: encouraging and facilitating networking and cooperation projects within the sector for business innovation and growth, including provision of better market intelligence; knowledge transfer; access to finance; training and marketing support, and appropriate sites and premises; harnessing the strengths and achievements of the sector for the wider marketing and promotion of Bristol for investment and regeneration; raising the public profile and promoting products, services and benefits on a local, national and international scale.

BETS are saying that nine different projects are proposed in and around Avonmouth, including 'green' power stations and recycling/waste operations. Full details of all these are not yet publicly available – its likely that debate will surround just how green some projects actually are. This is where energy and waste strategies, and technology assessment are crucial and will be in the spotlight.

We do know that Bristol City Council wants to build two wind turbines and Wessex Water four wind turbines. The Port of Bristol already has three wind turbines and may want two or three more. There are at least three proposals around for biomass power stations burning such fuels as woodchip, along with some interesting ideas for combined heat and power (where ‘waste’ heat is circulated and put to some use). The viability of this at Avonmouth needs looking into - can the heat be efficiently used there?? How?? Then there are a number of possible ‘energy from waste’ proposals, from pyrolysis/gasification or ‘waste cooking’ plants to conventional mass incineration with energy recovery (electricity generation). Mass burning and other heat treatment of waste is very controversial. The nature and origins of any biomass fuels used should is also a crucial green consideration (http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/index.php).

There are claims that Bristol is leading the green development agenda and could position itself as the so-called ‘green-collar capital’. There will be ongoing debate about how the scale of green investment matches the scale of the economic, climate and energy security problems though, with some calling for very large ‘green new deal’ plans to create an entirely different kind of economy and society out of the entwined economic and environmental chaos we now have.

In many ways the Avonmouth area is a good one for many of these energy and waste projects due to the accessibility to the port and to materials. Whether there are sufficient businesses and homes in the area to make best use of the Bristol City Council proposed grid to harness the heat generated from the various ‘green’ projects is an uncertainty. There may be far better locations for such good ideas and we need to think things through to ensure the overall strategy and technology mix give the best total net benefits. A lot of heat can be generated from several projects, should they come to fruition in difficult economic times. The potential is there to tackle two birds with one stone by generating genuinely clean, renewable energy and managing wastes efficiently within a low waste strategy, and generating loads of jobs in the process.

Labour's recycling record in Bristol

Councillor Judith Price raises the issue of Labour's recycling record in her letter 'Clarification about recycling in Bristol' (Open Lines, Post, March 17). Sadly she seems far more interested in having a go at political opponents like Councillor Hopkins through insult and mockery than in the actual facts of Labours record on recycling. She did not mention for instance that in Labour's last period running the city there was no improvement in the overall recycling rate at all!! She did not mention that Labour planned to mass incinerate waste, something that would inhibit recycling and encourage high waste production as well as giving out huge amounts of climate changing carbon emissions. She did not mention that Labour did this whilst seeking to bask in the green glow of Bristol as a potential 'green capital' of Europe. Its little wonder with such people and parties on the council that genuine green progress in the city is largely superficial.

Labour's Minister for the South West thinks mass incineration is green!!

Ben Bradshaw MP, Labour’s Minister for the South West expresses a very bizarre view when he says ‘By scuppering the Avonmouth plant Bristol Lib Dems and Tories have destroyed any green credibility they may have laid claim to.’ (‘They’ve destroyed any green credibility’, Open Lines, Bristol Evening Post, March 7). He calls it a ‘waste to energy plant’ when in fact what was planned was a mass incinerator designed to be fed with and burn many thousands of tonnes of waste, pumping out huge amounts of climate changing carbon emissions for several decades!

Mr Bradshaw refers to this plant as part of a strategy to meet ‘climate change and other green targets’ buts fails to mention that mass incineration is near the bottom of the list of green waste management priorities and that organisations like the Green Party, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Labour Environment Campaign and others were very strongly opposed (details) !

Just where is the evidence that this plant is green in any real and proper sense? Its notable that Mr Bradshaw says nothing in his letter about how this plant would contribute to that which is truly green, the creation of a low waste society, through waste reduction, reuse and recycling. He refers to the formerly proposed plant as ‘modern’ and ‘clean’ – in fact incineration is the thinking of the last century not the 21st and a technology than is massively outclassed by other options now available.

Bristol City Council's recycling record

I'm afraid Steven Moore, Service Director for Environment and Leisure at Bristol City Council, misses the point in his letter ('We're pround of recycling achievements', Open Lines, Jan 31). Is he proud of the fact that over 7000 tonnes of recycling was shipped to Belgium for processing, reducing some of the environmental advantage gained? Is this the best green practice we can expect from an aspiring 'green capital'? Surely we need to move on from the undoubted step in the right direction made in recent years, to make further recycling improvements - a green city is still a very long way off - and abandon waste incineration plans which make recycling improvements harder?

He talked proudly of the council's collection of food waste for composting. Is he proud of the fact that we've spent years sending the material all the way to Dorset in lorries because we didn't plan ahead and establish a local composting facility to coincide with the introduction of the brown bin scheme?? His own figures show that waste for composting travels 233,000 lorry miles every year, reducing some of the environmental gains made.

Invest in creating a low waste economy: create jobs, boost efficiency, cut pollution...

Bristol Evening Post columnist Suzanne Savill is someone I’ve often disagreed with (see here and here). She is hardly an advocate of green living. However, in this weekends column, leaving aside some comments that have an unfair dig at recycling, I very strongly agree with the main thrust of her argument on waste. She said ‘…the EU has rightly identified the vast amounts of waste going into limited landfill sites as a concern, it does not appear to have recognised the cause of much of our waste.’ Spot on. To solve the waste problem we need to address its roots – and we haven’t! The focus has largely been on recycling and not much on waste prevention, reduction and reuse as I’ve long and repeatedly argued eg here.

Suzanne correctly identifies the growing stockpiles of waste collected for recycling as a problem, giving Recycling UK figures of 100,000 tonnes of waste paper and cardboard currently in warehouses, growing at 8,300 tonnes every week – meaning a stockpile of 200,000 tonnes within months!! (It must be said that some feel the stockpiling reports in the media have been 'overblown' however).

She makes some very pertinent suggestions about what we should be doing as a priority eg legislation or systems of taxation to ensure that manufacturers don’t use so much packaging in the first place; not exporting waste to China and elsewhere, instead using the materials better in the UK; shops providing bags made from recycled cardboard and paper; using recycled materials to make packaging.

Yes, yes, yes – have you been reading the waste section of my blog Suzanne or perhaps the Green’s manifesto?? Some of her list of suggestions are being taken up but far too slowly and far from comprehensively. To set up the most efficient and the most sustainable systems of resource use and waste management you need to ‘complete the circle’ ie have a complete cycle of: cutting out resource use that is unnecessary; using and reusing products and resources efficiently; having localised and national reuse and recycling facilities; widespread production using reused products and recycled materials; making the consumption of products made from recycled materials commonplace and preferable…

We dont have law and taxation favouring this. We don’t have much infrastructure for doing all this. We have not had much investment in this. We’ve not had the total systems thinking needed. Masses of new jobs could be created by setting up local reduction, reuse, recycling economies and a low waste, even zero waste, national economy/society. What better time than now for putting in the government money needed (see the Green New Deal report)? It will be a massive lost opportunity if we don’t.

Talking trash on Bristol City Council (again!)

I see that Bristol's councillors have again been talking trash!

The mass incineration they seem so keen on is the thinking of the past - why keep recycling it ??

We need central and local government investment in waste reduction, reuse and recycling.

We need much more investment in making things from recycled materials here in the UK - and we need consumers to preference buy items made from recycled materials once they are made more available (some background here).

Now is the time to direct govt money this way - to create jobs and build a greener economy for the future!

Shoes made from recycled bus seats and tyres

Its notable that Justin Davies, First's MD locally is keen to stress the company committment to sustainability, including its waste management programme and climate change strategy via the side issue of recycled shoes (not that its a bad idea to make shoes from such recycled materials). Of course the major thing First can do to show their committment to sustainability is to run bus and train services of good quality, on a decent number of convenient routes, and at affordable prices! This is not something they are doing at all well at present and the production of shoes from recycled buses wont go anywhere near making up for the poor service !!

Should First be running our bus and train service at all?? No, lets have community ownership and establish a democratically run transport authority for Bristol and the surrounding area.

Christmas with a lower impact

Even in this time of recession its likely that during Christmas billions of pounds will be spent on food, drink and presents in the UK. Waste levels rise by 20% at this time and include food, energy, wrapping paper, cards and of course Christmas trees. We can enjoy ourselves without abandoning green concerns however with a little prioritisation and organisation. The following wont transform us into a sustainable society of course but whilst campaigning for the required leadership, policies, institutions and decision-making processes continues, they are positive steps I think are worth taking now on cards, decorations, trees, wrapping presents, chocolate and turkey...!!

Billions of Christmas cards are sent every year, many not made of recycled card and many thrown out rather than recycled. You could send an e-card instead or watch out for cards made from recycled material or make your own cards from previous ones! Bristol is well set up for recycling card, so its easy for us to use this system.

Old colour newspapers and magazines can be used to make decorations like paper chains. Paint, glitter, card from boxes or old Christmas cards, glue and a bit of wool or string can be used to make tree decorations. These activities will keep kids happy and occupied doing a creative task that really involves them in Christmas. Far better this than buying sparkly decorations made in a far away sweat shop by child labour then flown thousands of miles across the globe.

Millions of Christmas trees are bought, often to be thrown out, each year. There is enough tree waste to fill the Albert Hall more than three times! The best thing you can do if you have a tree is buy one with roots - it can be planted out and used year on year. If you choose a tree without roots make sure you use the local schemes for turning used ones into mulch for parks and gardens.

You may not think of all that sticky-tape securing wrapping paper as plastic but it is. It wont rot and is single-use. String and wool are both more biodegradable and reusable and so are much the better option for securing wrapping paper. String/wool does not mess up the paper it secures and leaves it in a state where it, with a little care, can be retained and reused – close to ten thousand tonnes of paper is used to wrap UK presents every year. If you have paper that cant be reused put it out for recycling in your black box!

Hundreds of millions is spent on chocolate for Christmas. If you buy fair trade chocolate you will be supporting cocoa farmers, their families and communities much more. They get a fair price for their cocoa beans. Rights, pay and working conditions are much better under fair trade.

Ten million or more turkeys are eaten during the festive season in the UK. Millions of these birds are reared intensively in huge windowless buildings containing crowds of thousands. Selectively bred and anti-biotic treated for maximum growth these birds cannot express natural behaviours and cannot mate without human intervention. I’m just not hungry for this kind of food at all and its ecological footprint is very high. If you don’t want to avoid turkey at Christmas altogether its worth paying more for one reared to much higher animal welfare standards.


More information/ideas: http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=2024

Rational debate on city's waste issue??

Looks like a case of the pot calling the kettle black for Councillor Judith Price Labour's Bristol City Cabinet member for Homes and Streetscene. In her letter ('Clarifying the 'clarification' on waste debate', Post 31 May) she called for '...a practical, non-political approach tempered with cold reason and logic to come up with the best solution...' for dealing with Bristol's waste mountain.

However, elsewhere in her letter she offers up very personal criticism of Lib Dem Councillor Gary Hopkins, to whom she was replying, by stating 'he always knows best' and later that 'he sneers' and that 'his side of the debate is fuelled by emotional hot air'. These observations may or may not be true but they are certainly not the kind of debate her own letter calls for!

Much of the rest of her letter is in fact very party political - who did what and when stuff, intent on laying blame with the opposition and deflecting it from Labour. So much for the rational approach that 'is needed'! Little wonder that debates on key issues often become poor when such insult and naked party-politics are brought into play.

I note that no-one from the council has chosen to reply to my, rational, contribution to the waste debate published in the Post recently (adapted from this blog post). In it I made a, rational, case for opposing mass incineration, pointing out that incineration with energy recovery is a mere fourth out of five in the waste management hierarchy. I asked why in these so-called green times government and council have not worked more effectively together on the top three priorities: waste avoidance/reduction; reuse; and recycling. If we dont address the waste issue correctly, focussing on the top priorities first, we will not build a green city and country. Will Councillor Price oblige me with a reply??

Reuse before recycling: praise the local milkman

Its great to recycle bottles in this way ('23 million bottles recycled in a year', Bristol Evening Post, 15 May 2008) - but even better and more environmentally friendly if we were reusing bottles instead. Unfortuneately we are not gearing up our society to take this better option. Lets sing the praises of the local milkman, who provides us with at least one clear way of reusing bottles over and over again!!

The argument for reuse is put very well here (summarised in the extract below):

Reuse keeps goods and materials out of the waste stream
Reuse advances source reduction
Reuse preserves the “embodied energy” that was originally used to manufacture an item
Reuse reduces the strain on valuable resources, such as fuel, forests and water supplies, and helps safeguard wildlife habitats
Reuse creates less air and water pollution than making a new item or recycling
Reuse results in less hazardous waste
Reuse saves money in purchases and disposal costs
Reuse generates new business and employment opportunities for both small entrepreneurs and large enterprises
Reuse creates an affordable supply of goods that are often of excellent quality.

Bristol Indymedia Launches Indycycle – Recycle Your Unwanted Stuff!

I've been asked to give a plug to the press release below, which I'm
happy to do!!


Bristol Indymedia is please to announce the launch of our Indycycle
service. Indycycle a website similar to the ideas of Freecycle.
Indycycle is a way of people re-cycling things they no longer need
to people who may have a user for it. For example if you had an
old bike you did not need, rather then throw it out to landfill,
why not offer it to somebody else who may need it. Indycycle is a
great way of us consuming less resources, stopping things going to
landfill and building stronger communities. This system is based
on the ideas of the freecycle movement, we don't aim to replace
freecycle, but to use our website to build on the ideas and make it
even easier to pass your items on.


All items must be offered for free – no exchanges or cash are
allowed. For the person offering an item, they get to clear space
without needing to make a journey to the tip and for the person
taking the item, they get something they need for free.


Indycycle allows you to post an item you don't want (or are looking
for) to the site along with a description, photo of the item and
your postcode. This means users can search for and see items they
may want but also how far they need to travel to pick it up.


A Bristol Indymedia volunteer said, "We are really excited about
the addition to what Indymedia does, we hope it will further build
on the many green projects, campaigns and initiatives in the
region. We see this project as a natural evolution of what
Indymedia does – trying to connect people using democratic forms of
media."


To use the Indycycle system please go to:
http://bristol.indymedia.org/indycycle/index.php


Image:
http://bristol.indymedia.org/graphics/indycycle/trash_logo_front.gif
Contacts: please email imc-bristol at lists dot indymedia dot org
and bristolindymedia at googlemail dot com

Notes for Editors;
1.Bristol Indymedia is a volunteer-run open-access news website
composed of the news, views, images and videos of its
readers/contributors. It is part of the global Indymedia movement,
a project focused on grassroots non-commercial news written by
ordinary people. For more on Bristol Indymedia see:
http://bristol.indymedia.org/about_us


2.The Indymedia movement is a global phenomena with its roots in
the global protest movement of 1998/1999. Using the emergent power
of the Internet and unhappy with the coverage of protests and the
issues that created them, the Indymedia (or IMC) movement has
expanded to over 100 sites in Europe, the Americas, Asia, the
Middle East and Australia and specific projects on global issues
such a climate change. For more information see:
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/FrequentlyAskedQuestionEn