Thursday, December 28, 2006
Hurrah for recycling!!! The farce of the future.
The local "news"paper "reports" on a council placed, self-congratulatory story about recycling.
Councillor Waller tells us all about the great success of the "plan": "since last January, 2,954 compost bins had been sold to residents."
"Every resident who composts their kitchen waste is cutting York's carbon emissions, producing rich compost for their garden and reducing the amount the council has to pay to the Government in landfill fines." I'm struggling here, if it wasn't being burnt, then how does it reduce carbon emissions? Anyway doesn't it emit carbon dioxide as it decomposes anyway? If it were being burnt then it would produce negligible ash, so would make no effective difference to the landfill tax.
Waller doesn't mention garden waste and notice the focus in the article is on composting kitchen waste. What of garden waste? Oh well the council introduced a "green bin" in which residents can put all their garden waste (not kitchen waste - "Be Good, your council is watching you don't go committing any offences against recycling") and this goes for composting by the council. The success of that scheme is measured in elephants, and it's usually reported as "...having saved the equivalent of forty elephants...", what was done with this waste before? Well a lot of it was composted by people in their gardens, now it's collected, put in the refuse truck, taken to a site and composted by the council, so they can meet government targets. It's great being green, no extra labour or transport costs involved here at all.
We even have a group (no doubt paid for/subsidised by me) called "York Rotters" who: "have done a lot of good work across York by demonstrating how easy it is to compost". Oh quite, how did we manage without them? Thank you council for your rotters.
Anyway there's no stopping the "recycling revolution": "City of York Council is set to roll out kerbside cardboard recycling services to nearly 40,000 more households in the new year." Hurrah!!!
There's more good news: "A study, conducted earlier this year, found that 97 per cent of residents across the city were recycling in some form or another...". Wow! How intellectual: "... some form or another ...", what a great study, I wonder how much that cost?
There are three comments which seem to be calling for more of the same, but with a modicum of sense in that they point out: "...we used to have centres where the guy's would pull out the decent stuff and sell it for a couple of quid. The council stopped this so everything including the timber, furniture either gets smashed up and land fill or burned."
Clearly the commentator has missed the point and somehow thinks that recycling is a goal of itself. You stupid fool, under that system it couldn't be monitored and recorded so government figures couldn't be generated. It's much better now, just look at the figures, 97% of residents are recycling [in some form or another] and soon the glorious 40% will be achieved [albeit by taking and transporting "garden waste" which was previously composted by people in their own gardens].
It's really great to be part of this recycling revolution, I know I'm helping, even if it saves just 0.000001% of the environment for the children it will be worth it [no matter what it costs].
Hurrah for recycling.
Councillor Waller tells us all about the great success of the "plan": "since last January, 2,954 compost bins had been sold to residents."
"Every resident who composts their kitchen waste is cutting York's carbon emissions, producing rich compost for their garden and reducing the amount the council has to pay to the Government in landfill fines." I'm struggling here, if it wasn't being burnt, then how does it reduce carbon emissions? Anyway doesn't it emit carbon dioxide as it decomposes anyway? If it were being burnt then it would produce negligible ash, so would make no effective difference to the landfill tax.
Waller doesn't mention garden waste and notice the focus in the article is on composting kitchen waste. What of garden waste? Oh well the council introduced a "green bin" in which residents can put all their garden waste (not kitchen waste - "Be Good, your council is watching you don't go committing any offences against recycling") and this goes for composting by the council. The success of that scheme is measured in elephants, and it's usually reported as "...having saved the equivalent of forty elephants...", what was done with this waste before? Well a lot of it was composted by people in their gardens, now it's collected, put in the refuse truck, taken to a site and composted by the council, so they can meet government targets. It's great being green, no extra labour or transport costs involved here at all.
We even have a group (no doubt paid for/subsidised by me) called "York Rotters" who: "have done a lot of good work across York by demonstrating how easy it is to compost". Oh quite, how did we manage without them? Thank you council for your rotters.
Anyway there's no stopping the "recycling revolution": "City of York Council is set to roll out kerbside cardboard recycling services to nearly 40,000 more households in the new year." Hurrah!!!
There's more good news: "A study, conducted earlier this year, found that 97 per cent of residents across the city were recycling in some form or another...". Wow! How intellectual: "... some form or another ...", what a great study, I wonder how much that cost?
There are three comments which seem to be calling for more of the same, but with a modicum of sense in that they point out: "...we used to have centres where the guy's would pull out the decent stuff and sell it for a couple of quid. The council stopped this so everything including the timber, furniture either gets smashed up and land fill or burned."
Clearly the commentator has missed the point and somehow thinks that recycling is a goal of itself. You stupid fool, under that system it couldn't be monitored and recorded so government figures couldn't be generated. It's much better now, just look at the figures, 97% of residents are recycling [in some form or another] and soon the glorious 40% will be achieved [albeit by taking and transporting "garden waste" which was previously composted by people in their own gardens].
It's really great to be part of this recycling revolution, I know I'm helping, even if it saves just 0.000001% of the environment for the children it will be worth it [no matter what it costs].
Hurrah for recycling.
Labels: recycling, York council
