Cart before the horse...

The BBC's Local Government Correspondent, Mr John Andrew,has recently written of his experiences of Belgium's Rubbish Solution, he visited Lokeren following in the footsteps of the environment minister Ben Bradshaw.

Having obviously read the piece, it does raise for me some points to ponder...

I can understand a countries reasons for recycling materials, I can understand protecting the environment, apart from Aluminium, there appears to be nothing to be gained by recycling, it cost more to get Aluminium out of the ground than it does to recycle. Therefore cans are a valuable resource, and it is worthwhile to recycle them.

Paper production uses sustainable forests to produce paper and card. The use of recycled paper uses more resources and leaves worse residue than if it was just binned. The bleaches and chemicals used during the cleaning process are more deadly and cause a serious pollution problem.

These are just two items from a list of recycling items accepted by councils.


UK Waste production is roughly 400 millions tons per annum. Only 7.5% of this is actually household waste, 30 million tons, now that's quite a large figure, but dwarfed by the outpouring of waste from the commercial and industrial sector. Do they as I suspect use the same landfill sites that our household waste goes into? How much do they have to pay for getting rid of their rubbish? The Constuction Industry alone produces 20% of the waste, a massive 80 million tons.

Before being landfilled could the waste not be compacted, reducing space, could it not be used as fuel? How about compacting and filling in old mining shafts that cover the whole of this small island?

I vaguely remember some town in Europe using their waste to fuel a power plant, is that viable here? Why is no-one in power telling us wether this is possible? Why is everything down to tax, tax, tax?

What Mr Andrew has not addressed in his short piece is where this actual legislation came from. As with most of the press and the BBC, they all seem to want to keep it quiet that 80% of all our legislation comes from Brussels, and is merely rubber stamped by UK Government!

In the article he mentions cost, and how the people pay on average £56.00 annually, now I might be a wee bit sceptical here, but does anyone seriously think that the UK's Local Councils and Government are going to be willing to set such a low rate, not a chance, as ever they will go for the big buck.

He then goes on to the biggest problem I have with all of this, chipping of bins, one fact is inescapable, they knew what was coming, long before it hit the news. Wheelie bins were issued to the homes of Blackpool in 2004, at which time they were already chipped!! Why?? Who said it would be a good idea to put the cart before the horse?

Why do the fuckwits in our employ seem to feel free to treat us like numpties?