Re: "This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today."
- From: Vinny Burgoo <hlunnh@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 13:58:28 +0100
In alt.usage.english, Mike Page wrote:
On Wed, 30 May 2007 18:47:54 +0100, Peter Duncanson
Burning books is "bad". It puts yet more CO2 into the atmosphere.
The paper should be recycled.
In the increasingly authoritarian and fascistic European Union our
local government bodies with responsibility for waste/trash
collection are fined if they do not collect and recycle everything
that can be recycled.
I think the point is that they are not allowed to dump it in land
fill.
That's right. In one-size-fits-all Europe, everyone has to deal with their waste in the same approved fashion. So we'll probably never see dust carts powered by electricity generated at landfill sites by burning methane.
It's all box-ticking and targeteering. It's all rubbish.
[1] Most of our 'recycled waste' from domestic collections,
including all of the paper, is incinerated.
Not so. Most of the paper collected from houses for recycling used to go straight into landfill. These days some of it is actually recycled. There was a piece on the telly only the other day about a large domestic-paper-recycling plant. I'm sure some is incinerated, but certainly not all.
The point of the telly piece was that those silly little green boxes - the ones that are supposed to receive two weeks' worth [sic] of paper, metal, glass and plastic all mixed in together - are not up to the job. The paper arriving at the plant is increasingly contaminated with beer cans, plastic milk bottles etc. - a tenfold increase in non-paper waste in two years, I think the manager said. Some of the blame lies with the poor sods who have to go through the green boxes and separate the waste but the real culprit is whoever thought it a good idea to have us dump everything in one (tiny) box.
I gave up using the green box a couple of months after they were issued. The bin men wouldn't take the metal, the paper blew all over the verge, and I didn't like the idea of my booze consumption being on public display (especially as my boozy neighbours used to dump some of their gin bottles in my box, the cheeky devils). I take the bottles to the dump every month or two, the beer cans go straight in the bin and I burn the paper and cardboard - in the ancient kitchen range if I can be arsed, so it helps to heat the water, but usually outside. It's enormously satisfying burning junk mail. Everyone should do it.
And another thing - the huge green wheelie bin issued for the collection of garden and kitchen waste has never been fully emptied and has been partly emptied only twice in two years. It's big enough to hold a Christmas tree but I only put chicken carcasses, egg shells and the odd hunk of stale bread in there - not much but it builds up over the months. There's currently a foot and a half of stinky mould in the bottom of the thing. I don't blame the bin men. It's the system that's wrong. Country people don't need a huge bin for garden waste. And if they're organised - which I'm not - all uncooked food scraps can be composted without attracting rats. But it's one size fits all again - because of a central government directive? - so we get a system designed for townies. As long as the boxes are ticked it doesn't matter what's in them or what shape or size they are.
[1] With rising sea levels I should have thought strategically
dumped rubbish could be used in sea defences.
Neat idea! Let's ship it all to the Maldives.
--
V
Honk if you want to save the planet
.
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