Chair today - gone tomorrow

I was wandering around the grounds of Durham Cathedral with my sister and her partner today when I came across this skip full of office chairs. There must have been at least 30 of them. They looked in remarkably good condition but had just been thrown on top on some of some builders rubble and were already stained by the rain.

I don't know which of us was the most angry. My sister also pointed out that as well as local recycling initiatives that would have found a home for the chairs, there were three local prisons in the area with workshops dedicated to repairing and renovating old items.

You can't help but wonder what the builders and craftsmen who created the cathedral, its beautiful carved stone, intricate carpentry and  wonderful paintings, would have made of this waste? Can you imagine them chucking away the pews for want of  nail or a lick of paint?

Anne

Not a scrap of common sense!

We all hate it when somebody says I told you so, so I won’t say it, but rest assured I am doing my silent I told you so dance.  Why, because the car scrappage scheme has got to be one of the worst thought-through UK government initiatives for a long time.


Months ago we mentioned our concerns about the financial and sustainable credentials of this scheme and it seems we were right.  These pictures which appeared in the Daily Mail show this former airfield in Thurleigh, Bedfordshire, one of a number of 'holding areas' packed with vehicles sold through £400million scrappage scheme.
Who in their right mind thought this would be good for the individual, the country or the environment?

Not only have unscrupulous dealers taken advantage of the situation putting up car prices to cover their losses or make even more profit, but we now also have the motorised equivalent of the European butter mountain!

It seems we now have over £28 million worth of perfectly serviceable cars lying around going to waste, merely waiting to be crushed.

Surely it would have been more effective to have given us the cash to have our elderly cars serviced and made more road worthy rather than being coerced into buying a new car that we didn’t really need, plus having to get a loan to pay for it.
>> Read the original piece Would you scrap it or save it?

Hilary B

Waste Not Want Not

Did you know that according to Waste Watch, the volume of waste we produce in the UK in one day is enough to fill Trafalgar Square up to the top of Nelson's Column? When averaged out over a year this equates to 300 million square metres of land, that's the same as covering the pitch at Manchester United Football Club's ground, 28,450 times .

Or that the UK uses over six billion glass bottles and jars each year? It would take you over three and a half thousand years to sing "Six Billion Green Bottles Hanging on the Wall"! We produce and use 20 times more plastic today than we did in the 1950's! An average person throws away 74kg of organic waste each year, which is the same as 1077 banana skins and 900 million items of clothing are sent to landfill each year.

This is pretty shocking stuff and when you realise that on average, each person in the UK throws away seven times their body weight in rubbish every year. It is quite humbling that we are so wasteful, but what shocks me more is not just the amount we throw away, but the quality of what we throw away. Ok, we have schemes for recycling, but that is about plastics, papers and tins etc. If you want to get rid of larger items, what happens to them? Yes there are schemes out there that will relieve you of your items, but this sort of recycling is centred on somebody else doing the work. If you want something recycled you have to give it to somebody else to take away and deal with. More importantly it seems that a lot of people can’t even be bothered to pick up the phone and organise it, a huge amount of perfectly serviceable items are taken to local rubbish tips every day and dumped.

Just think of all that wasted potential sitting on a tip, waiting to simply rot away. So many of these items are perfectly useable, just a little worn and faded or surplus to requirements. This throw away society that we live in means that we think it is acceptable to just dump things that we no longer want and buy something new. And yet all some of these items need is a lick of paint and a little TLC and they could have years of service left in them.

Your local tip is a great place to go bag a bargain. Take a trip and see what you can find. One note of caution though is that some local authorities will allow you to go and buy things from a specially designated site, but others refuse outright on the basis of health and safety, so do double check before you go.

Top tips from Which? to ensure your recycling gets recycled

According to the May edition of the UK's Which? magazine, some 229,389 tonnes of recycling and composting material put out by households in England last year ended up in landfill.

The experts spoken to by Which? say recycling only gets rejected if it is ‘contaminated’ – for example when the wrong type of material gets put in or the items are in poor condition (soggy newspapers).

Rejection levels vary around the country. The 5 authorities with the highest rejection levels, according to Which?, had rejection rates between 22% (Hertsmere Borough Council) and 11%.

We have our own views on whether local authorities truly embrace recycling or are just going through the motions but, as make and menders, we should give them the least possible excuse for rejecting what we put out.

Which? published some excellent tips from Philip Ward at Wrap for improving your recycling skills. Wherever you happen to live, this is sensible advice to follow if you are consigning items to a recycling facility or kerbside collection.

Top tips from Which?
1. Only put something in a recycling box if you know your council will accept it. One wrong thing could result in the whole box being rejected. Ask your council or use the postcode checker at recyclenow.com.
2. Wash and squash – use old washing up water.
3. Remove lids and labels if your council asks you to do this.
4. Find alternatives for items your council can’t deal with.

We’d add one more tip: On the morning of your recycling, double check if a passing pedestrian has tossed something into your box that would lead to it being rejected (crisp packets and half eaten sandwiches seem to be particularly popular).

TheWhich? guide to recycling has tips on what to do with those difficult-to-recycle items, how to make the most of your council's services and a detailed breakdown of the materials councils typically accept for recycling.

Useful links
>> www.which.co.uk/recycling
>> Make it and Mend it tips for sorting recycling