Single Use Plastic Bags

I don't get the plastic bag initiative which is supposed to help the environment by reducing litter which can be harmful to wildlife both on land and at sea, and cutting down on the use of plastic which comes from oil.

From Monday 5th October 2015 in England there is a 5p charge for single use plastic bags. But this only applies to supermarkets and large retailers with 250 or more employees. Smaller shops are exempt. So why does the charge not apply to all shops? Surely the aim should be to stop all single use plastic bags and to get people into the habit of taking durable shopping bags with them. The good old mantra of re-use first, reduce, recycle.

The Government hopes that the extra money the shops receive will be put to good causes. Many supermarkets have announced that charities will benefit. Why not follow the Northern Ireland route - in 2013 a 5p levy was introduced and the retailers pay the net proceeds of the levy to the Department of Environment at Stormont? This year 21 environmental groups that had their budgets slashed as part of government cutbacks received a share of a £1.25m fund raised by plastic bag charges. It makes sense that any money raised is used to improve the environment. Why is this not happening in England? 

Also, why does the charge not cover any disposable bag as in other countries?  Paper bags are not necessarily made from sustainable sources.

Local Authorities have to enforce this regulation. I wonder how many cash-starved local councils will do this?

England is lagging behind other countries in this initiative. In 2002, Bangladesh became the first country in the world to ban thinner plastic bags altogether, after they were found to have choked local drainage systems during floods.

See the recent article on the BBC website and the older one on Northern Ireland.
See the Government Guidelines.

Stroud Opposed to Plastic Bags

A review by Pat Sykes.

I went to my first meeting of the STOP (Stroud Opposed to Plastic Bags), recently. It was inspiring to be in a room with people enthusiastic about working together creatively to make Stroud, 'Plastic bag-free'. There are as many ideas as there are plastic bag problems and it's clear that it's not going to be easy. Great to hear from the youngest member of the 'team', James, whose eyes shone keenly as he enthused on how he thought he would reach his peer group in school with the 'no plastic' message. He's up for designing hand-drawn 'on-message' posters, to appeal to youth. We agreed on a list of priorities: -education, supermarket liaison (a key action to get them involved), press & publicity, research and volunteers came forward to help with each task. It would be so easy to let the enormity of the project prevent any action at all and team-work will spread the work-load and keep activists on board. It would be good to see more people getting involved as it 'hots' up… watch out for details of the official launch of the campaign.

I was heartened to hear on 'Costing The Earth' – BBC4, that Belgium is leading the way with mining landfills for valuable waste material that had been 'dumped' some time ago. I recommend readers to look up this project. There are UK partners, too, which is promising.

I've pledged to stop using plastic bags in my home both for shopping and for disposing of 'smelly' waste – like cooked food, in the black bag. I think there's a great hole in the general understanding about composts. Always helpful to ask others what they do... one lady flushes fish skin and bones down the toilet!

Better, of course, to adopt some home-composting practices – like small table top wormeries for cooked waste, which shouldn't go on compost heaps, I believe. I'm taking my compostables down to the community allotment I help with (run by Fair Shares- an amazing community group and more of this anon), and the 'smelly' remainder I can't recycle, till I get some worms I'm wrapping in newspaper for the time being. Can you do one small thing, this week, to reduce your dependency on plastic?

Plastic bag use on the rise

Some 18 months ago I wrote a long blog entitled 'Should Stroud go Plastic Bag free?' - see here - well I've just come back from the Coop where I forgot my reusable bags and came away with two plastic bags - a rare occurrence and always one tainted with guilt - but made worse by the fact that this year plastic bag use is back on the rise after several years of falling away - see Guardian here.

Photo: Plastic bags in hedge - known to some as Witches Knickers

While in many ways plastic bag reduction is a sideshow - it is far more important what other stuff we are buying and throwing away - we need to look at the whole picture. Plastic bags are after all less than half a percent of our domestic rubbish - there are some concerns that it can lead to people purshasing different plastic for their rubbish or other unsustainable bags....but hey I've covered that in that blog 18 months ago. Anyway I welcome moves in Wales where shoppers will be charged 5p per bag from this October. Northern Ireland and Scotland are also looking at it. In Wales, the imminent charge may have helped to cut bag use – the total was down by 7% last year, compared with the rise in England and Scotland. But please let's not get distracted - we need to look at the wider picture of our waste and consumption. Reducing plastic bags is great but we have much more to do.

Dr Paul Connett: no case for incinerator in Gloucestershire

On Thursday night I got to Kings Stanley Village Hall for an evening of serious entertainment and information. Dr Paul Connett (pictured left) who lives in the US but is currently on a lecture tour in Italy was grabbed for this evenings meeting. Indeed he was just over after opening a new waste facility in Italy and earlier in January he spoke about Zero Waste to the Division for Sustainable Development - apparently his most exciting day ever because it felt like he was getting through to policy-makers.

Anyway I'm rambling on - it was a bit of a coup for the waste campaign groups to get Paul here - campaigner Sue Oppenheimer opened the meeting and editor of Glos Media, Ian Mean introduced Paul Connett (see picture below of Sue and Ian) - promising an 95 minutes of talk and no one falling asleep - well infact we got quite a bit more of talk and the meeting ran on well over 9.30 until after 10 with questions at the end. I doubt anyone fell asleep except perhaps 8 year old Little Miss Green (see more below)!

Paul's energy, passion and enthusiasm were something to behold but equally it was matched with science and argument - there was lots to learn although the whole thrust and arguments are well familiar to Greens - indeed it read a lot like a Green party manifesto. No that's unfair - most of our manifestos are pretty pretty dry, this was not - this was alive and just how we need to get the message out there to all parties and folk.

Well I was about to start writing about the talk itself then checked out the My Zero Waste site - although I've conversed with these folk and written a piece about waste on their site I hadn't met them - well they'd seen the talk advertised on my blog and I recognised them from photos. It was great to meet them as they are, like Paul, more than passionate about waste - their website is well worth a regular visit. Indeed they have a great new project with crisp packets - see it here.

Anyway they have already written up a great piece here is their bit below from their blog on 'My Zero Waste' taken from their excellent website - please only read on if you promise to visit their site as I've not asked them if I can use it! I finish with some additional comments on the evening from me and there are also some photos I took during the evening. It is also worth noting Paul's website - American Health Studies has some excellent videos and some of his powerpoint presentations - apparently this evenings one may well be available on that site in a week.

I’ve just got back from an excellent talk by Dr Paul Connett, Professor of Chemistry, St Lawrence University, New York.

Dr Connett has researched waste management issues for over 14 years and is a world leading expert in incineration. He has given over 2000 talks in 52 countries with the aim of bringing clarity to the issue of incineration and sustainability.

The meeting was hosted by Ian Mean, Editor of our local paper “The Citizen” who opened the meeting by saying that waste was one of the two biggest issues we currently face in Gloucestershire. The meeting was organised by supported of four local campaign groups - Glosain, Glosvain, SWARD and Gloucestershire Friends of the Earth.

Incineration: A poor solution

Dr Connett’s opening line was “Incineration: A poor solution for the twenty first century” and I knew we’re in for a riveting 1 1/4 hours.

One and a quarter hours is a long time to talk, and an even longer time to listen, but this flew by and before we knew it, people were queuing up to shake his hand, ask questions and Little Miss green had her head resting on my lap for sleep.

Paul covered the arguments against incineration, told us why gasification (and other technologies) were not the answer and covered the zero waste strategy solution.

Solutions

The talk was compelling; not one to dwell on the negative, the thrust was to focus on the solution - a call to action for a zero waste future. The message bought to us was that what we do as individuals has an impact on the world. Paul pointed out that during the 20th century, the focus was on waste management and how to get rid of waste efficiently and with minimal damage to our health and the environment. The 21st century focus needs to be on RESOURCE management and sustainability for future generations.

Consumption is key

The real problem, as Paul sees it, is fighting everyone’s over consumption. By the time a child is 16, they have watched 350,000 TV adverts; all telling them they can be sexy, intelligent, popular and happy if they buy x,y, and z. He pointed out that Development is measured by how quickly we can extract, produce, consume and waste something. See Annie Leonard’s “The story of stuff” below for a dynamic 20 minute talk on this.

Incinerators still need landfill!

Incinerators don’t challenge our consumption and they sabotage genuine moves towards sustainability. Incinerators also stifle innovation because you have to feed it. The shocking statistic I wasn’t fully aware of was that for every 4 tonnes of stuff you burn in an incinerator, you still have to LANDFILL 1 tonne of toxic ash.

Dioxins and toxins

We were then told about dioxins, and all the other toxins given off by incinerators such as mercury, cadmium, lead and arsenic and shown that dioxins accumulate in animal fat. This means you don’t even need to be living near an incinerator to suffer some of the negative effects. You simply need to eat the animals that have been grazing on nearby land to ingest dioxins. Once you get these dioxins in your system you can’t get rid of them; except for women, who can get rid of them by having a baby. Apparently any dioxins stored in your fat goes into your baby when you get pregnant.

Zero waste solutions

After all the facts about why we should avoid incineration, the rest of the talk was on the solution - the zero waste model. Comprising of things you would expect such as kerbside collections, home composting, recycling, reusing, repairing and moving into other lesser thought of areas such as de-constructing, economic incentives, waste reduction initiatives and better industrial design, Paul showed us how a zero waste future was possible.

He talked about many inspiring communities all across the world in Nova Scotia, Japan, Spain, California and Italy who were virtually sending zero to landfill and incinerating nothing. Areas where recycling programmes were in place, community composting was commonplace, refills were the norm and new parents were given free reusable nappies! To see some of these inspiring stories visit the American Environmental Health Studies videos page.

Quality of life

The message we were left with was that we had to teach the future generations how to separate their quality of life from material consumption; reiterating that if we continued as we are living now we would need another 2 - 4 planets to sustain us. He also optimistically told us that a threatened community is a strengthened one if people work together. He reminded us that change begins with every person talking to their friends and neighbours.

Spread the message

I hope you all feel great about that, because I know many of you talk to your friends and colleagues and you must keep doing that - you have no idea how far those ripples will spread in time.

At the end of the talk, Ian Mean called Dr Connett’s talk “Inspirational” He said “We really know why the UN wants him back and what I got was that we can all do something.”

Now go and visit My Zero Waste - this post by My Zero Waste was here and finished with a short film about what you can do re waste - but there is plenty more to explore...

Those sticking around for now... here's some more about the evening...amongst the 100 plus guests there were 4 Stroud District councillors there, myself and John Marjoram, Dennis A from Lib Dems and Labour's Ken Stevens was there for a chunck of time. A handful of other councillors from other areas present but sadly not many visible Tories - a real shame as it is just what you need to hear - especially if you have been having hours of discussions with incinerator companies that tell you how wonderful they are...it was particularly good to hear about all the possible solutions - many of which we are already working on (see screen shot above).

Anyway to some more discussion....

I had thought the whole talk was about this aspect as Paul is well known in this area of research - and I have to say I've had some reservations about this issue - there are many excellent good reasons why not to have an incinerator without needing to even look at this issue - see here my comments about incinerators. In fact I just got sent this comment that I respect alot from someone who has looked at this in some detail..."My personal view on the particulates, the PM2.5's, etc, which is "particulates, 2.5 micron or less", is that yes, there are some there, invisible to the eye, and yes, they can lodge deep in the lungs, BUT every diesel lorry and diesel train that passes produces similar, or potentially MORE damaging particulates healthwise. In oher words, I do not accept that vehicular particulates are less dangerous."

Taking into account this it could be argued that thermal treatment, gasification - not mass burn incineration, of the output from an MBT plant should be considered. By definition, this material has had all recyclates that can be practicably removed taken out, it is good for nothing. So the last ounce of value is the energy released by thermal treatment...others would argue landfill is the answer for this? It was certainly interesting the quotes Paul had about gassification and how there is more uncertainty than perhaps we have been led to believe - see screen shot of letter from Lurgi re gassification.

I have looked more closely at some of what has been written and I do think we should have very real concerns about nanoparticles....it is clear we need more research into this area. The precautionary principle means therefore that we should not add to existing problems with an incinerator - but landfill has it's own problems......I'd be interested to hear more on this issue.

One Green commentator said: "None of this changes the fact that the RIGHT solution is waste reduction at source: don't build it into products, don't buy wasteful products, minimise your own waste, treat as much waste as possible at the household and neighbourhood level. That would turn big, inflexible waste plants into white elephants. But we're not there yet, and right now we have to have practical, workable, cost effective and inevitably somewhat imperfect policies for our imperfect world."

Other bits of interest that Paul mentioned during his talk included:

- incinerators are the most expensive form of electricity generation
- Zurich's community composting identified the social aspects of getting to know neigbours as one of the most positive benefits of the project
- must take account of the value of reusable items like old furniture: many will remember my failed attempts to avert the closure of furniture recycling in Stroud - see here.
- Paul supported going plastic bag free - see my thoughts here.
- don't forget to factor in money spent on an incinerator leaves the community while alternatives are spent within the community eg more recycling, composting etc
- we heard about various ways to increase recycling - in one place Trashman visited a home each week and if they had no recycling in their bin they got £1,000 - I did suggest at the meeting this might be something for Glos Media and Mr Mean in lycra??
- What was good in the talk was the linking back to consumption - however the area I felt Paul didn't really address was how do we encourage and support people to reduce consumption? Yes taxes on packaging etc can help but there is a lot more to it.....more of that I'm sure in future posts...
- lots more but I've run out of pff writing this!

Anyway the event finished with Paul and David Purshase (see photo) singing with the audience joining in with an anti-incinerator song!

Lastly let me finish for now with my recent letter last month to local press here and a link to further details of the process in Gloucestershire here. I strongly recommend getting Paul's powerpoint presentation when it becomes available - there is also due out on a Youtube one of Pauls talks in Plymouth.

Should Stroud go plastic bag free?

Well a very happy new year to all. I actually started this blog post many months ago and I never quite managed to finish and indeed it is now a rough ramble with bits that might well be out of date. I was trying to cover too many issues about the plastic bag in one post - including whether they are a distraction to the real issues and the alternatives...and whether paper is better than plastic? Plus where is the world's largest waste site? Well here the blog post is for all it's sins it kicks off 2010....

John Marjoram, when he was Mayor, started the drive to reduce the number of plastic carrier bags used in Stroud (see here) - there has recently also been the launch of a bag-free pledge for the town known as ‘The Stroud Charter’ as another step on route.

Stroud Town have been working hard on a campaign to join other towns in the UK who have already made the move to plastic bag-free. This last month Wales has affirmed it's plans to cut bag use by taxing plastic bags - see here.

Every year around 13 billion plastic bags are given away to UK shoppers - some previous estimates put plastic bag use at over 290 for every person in the UK. Many of these end up being dumped on landfill sites, where experts believe they can take up to 1,000 years to break down. As we are increasingly being made aware, the environmental impact of discarded plastic is devastating, with many plastic bags ending up as waste in our seas, on our beaches, streets and parks - indeed the couple of photos below have been reproduced many times along with numerous others to highlight the plight of wildlife. Indeed a whale washed up off the coast of France had 800 kilos of plastic bags in its stomach!

Indeed they have been dubbed "roadside daisies" in South Africa and some now even mournfully refer to them as the country's national flower! In Ireland, they are known as "witches' knickers" because they flap like satanic underwear in trees - indeed there were some photos in Stroud this last month capturing this 'photogenic' aspect of plastic bags!

To play our part in easing the burden the Town Council, the District Council and Stroud Chamber of Trade and Commerce have joined forces to help promote a new Charter for Stroud with the aim of raising awareness of the impact that the continued use of plastic bags has on our environment, and to encourage shoppers to actively think about the way they carry their shopping.

As part of the scheme they will be encouraging local businesses to join in helping reduce the use of plastic bags in Stroud with a target of reducing use by at least 50% before May 2010. We have seen the District Council, on behalf of the Town Council has sourced a re-usable hessian bag as an alternative to plastic. The bags carry a 'Shop Local' message and have been available to customers for £1. Meanwhile many local businesses have also signed up and have their own alternatives to plastic. Shops signing up to the Charter are being asked to display The Stroud Charter poster in their windows: 'The Stroud Charter: working towards a plastic bag-free town'.

Modbury did it first

Modbury became the first in Europe to reject plastic bags in its shops. Rebecca Hosking’s film was the inspiration for Modbury becoming the first town in England to phase out plastic bags and shows the effect of plastic on wildlife, including how an albatross had picked up plastic drifting in the sea mistaking it for squid and then feeding it to its chicks.

People said it wouldn't last, yet the self-imposed ban by the 40-odd shopkeepers has held firm and led to many others seeking to ditch what has been described as 'the eponymous symbol of the throwaway society'. The news of Modbury's success has even made it back to Hawaii and the island of Maui, where a film was made of upsetting footage of plastic bags killing marine animals. Maui itself is in the process of passing making the island and its 125,000 residents plastic bag-free within three years.

Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire has already become the second town to stop handing out plastic bags after four women calling themselves the Bag Ladies convinced nearly all the town's 104 traders that plastic was passé.

The National Trust has already managed to cut its plastic bags by 95% after starting levying a five pence charge as part of a drive to make its’ properties more environmentally friendly.

Brighton also looks set to go plastic bag free, while 33 boroughs in London agreed unanimously to create a city-wide ban on all throwaway bags but then pulled out in response to the Government plans to try and reduce bags (see here) - and the islands of Mull, Arran and Guernsey, are racing to become the first plastic bag-free island in the world ahead of Maui. In South Africa the legislation threatens imprisonment for violations! Indeed across the globe various moves are being made.

In Ireland, who were one of the first to tackle bags, a tax of 15 cents per bag resulted in a 90% drop in plastic bag usage, and raised 3.5 million Euros which was spent on environmental projects. San Francisco, Greens pushed through a ban on all non-recyclable plastic bags at major supermarkets and pharmacies and it is estimated that this ban alone will reduce oil consumption by nearly 800,000 gallons per annum. Bangladesh has banned polythene bags altogether while Taiwan and Singapore are taking steps to discourage their use.

A student from Mumbai, India noted to a Green colleague that floods there had caused a huge amount of damage and plastic bags clogging up drains were a huge contributory factor and as a result the city has banned plastic bags.

China has also announced a ban on super-thin plastic bags in the country as well as a fee for other plastic bags. A notice on a Government website said: "Our country consumes huge amounts of plastic bags every year. While providing convenience to consumers, they have also caused serious pollution and waste of energy and resources because of excessive use and inadequate recycling." The notice suggested widespread use of cloth bags and baskets instead. Penalties for rule flouters, including manufacturers of plastic bags that are less than 0.025 millimeters thick, include fines and other penalties. Up to 3 billion plastic bags a day are used in China. China has seen the closure of one of the world's largest plastic-bag factories, with the loss of 20,000 jobs, due to the government's concern about "white pollution".

Is the plastic bag campaign a distraction?

Of course minimising plastic bag use is desirable - however I do see a bit of a problem in that the Government (and many retailers) are happy to shout about this because it provides cover for not doing far more important things. They put out press releases, appear on the telly etc and get plaudits for reducing a visible, but in the grand scheme of things minor, environmental problem.

Too many think they are green by refusing plastic bags, buying organic food and cycling the odd trip. Do plastic bag free towns actually reduce pressure for people to act on more serious issues? We need much more fundamental changes. Plastic bags only represent a tiny fraction of the waste stream by weight or by volume. For example, in the US they account for less than half a percent of domestic refuse.

In Ireland, following the small tax on each bag as noted above, plastic bag use went down 90%. However binliner use went up over 300%. Binliners are heavier than plastic bags and not taxed. However overall plastic use is still down but not as much as sometimes argued - and there has been almost no change in import figures for plastic to Ireland.

Another effect of the tax was to encourage an increased reliance on paper bags which, according to a number of life-cycle analysis studies that have compared the environmental performance of various types of bags, can require more energy to manufacture and release more greenhouse gases when degrading following their disposal! More on that in a mo...

It isn't the plastic bags but what is inside them that counts!

Of course as I noted above - the plastic bag is only a small part of the problem - it is not the bags that are the issue - it's what's inside them. If the consumer fills their organic-hemp-bags-for-life with Pacific tuna and air-freighted kiwi-fruit, and salad crops in December, they're not solving any problems by buying into the greenwash - they're still part of the bigger problems. Plastic bags are not our most pressing issue by a long long way. It is our consumption...

So what to think?

James Lovelock has referred to the current obsession with plastic bags as "rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic".

Danny Kennedy, the campaigns manager for Greenpeace Australia-Pacific said: "I see the case of reusable bags as fairly superficial, but also very useful..The best thing about the plastic bag campaign is that people recognized the ecological world view; that everything is linked. It's also very empowering that so many people have engaged, and so quickly. If that's people's first entry point into taking action, then it's fantastic. Their first taste is a win. But governments can't think that's the only thing."

Chris Goodall, the author of "How to Live a Low Carbon Life, and Ten Technologies to Save the Planet" says: "It's the carbon content of what goes into your plastic bags, not the plastic bags themselves, that we should be worrying about. This is 100% more important than, say, the amount of oil used to make one plastic bag. Plastic bags are a litter issue – yes, they certainly cause great damage to marine life – but they are frequently seen as a carbon issue. They are not. They are an easy target because they are one of the most visible environmental problems. But this doesn't make them the most important environmental issue. Many assume that recycling is the answer to the waste problem, rather than simply consuming less. It's not an easy message for many people to accept. Worrying about plastic bags also gives the illusion that small steps make a difference. This kind of radical change in thinking will take a generation."

View from a campaigner: "My personal view is that the disposable plastic bag is the icon of our unsustainable lifestyles. I know that removing plastic bags from our lives won't make us a sustainable culture anymore than saving the polar bear will stop global warming. However, plastic bags and polar bears will make us all stop and think about the bigger picture."

Another view from a campaigner: "Plastic bags are widely recognised as an environmental menace, both as non-biodegradable waste and as a profligate form of oil consumption. The UK needs to legislate to curb this most ubiquitous symbol of consumerist short-termism."

And my view?

Well at the end of the day plastic bags are the ultimate symbol of our throwaway culture and it is right that they should be targeted but let us not get distracted from the wider issues - this must only be the start of much wider changes.

So what is the most sustainable thing to do? If we do use plastic then heavy duty multi-use plastic bags with closed-loop recycling. Charge for the bags, and give a refund when they are recycled. All of a sudden, they have a positive value - and they don't get thrown away. However plastic is still plastic - what about the alternatives...more in a mo on that....

Alternatives to the bag?

See where it all started with the first Plastic Bag free town with Rebecca Hosking in Modbury, Devon here with excellent stuff on her website about the alternatives here to plastic bags. In a letter I wrote to local press more than a couple of years ago I made a similar point about needing to take care about what we replace it with:

You report that the newly launched limited edition 'Anya Hindmarch' designer bags were sold out within 10 minutes at Sainsbury's in Stroud (27/04/07). The bag has a great logo with an important message: 'I'm not a plastic bag'. Sadly it is made from pesticide-sprayed, fertiliser-grown, intensively-irrigated Indian cotton: a crop which is causing untold damage to ecosytems and the Indian people alike. There are many sustainable alternatives to both plastic and this cotton. We don't need this 'greenwash' from Sainsbury's. Apparently one customer even had his new Hindmarch bag put inside a plastic bag! It is time instead we had real action in this country to cut our plastic use and end the disposal costs of some eight billion bags a year. Buried plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to decompose while a whale washed up off the coast of France had 800 kilos of plastic bags in its stomach! San Francisco has just banned all non-recyclable plastic bags at major supermarkets and pharmacies. Similar bans are in place in South Africa, Taiwan, Bangladesh and Paris. In this country many including the Green party and some local authorities want to see a tax on plastic bags. When the Irish did this they reduced their use by 95%! A MORI survey in this country shows 63% support a tax. Let's do it.

The first plastic "baggies" were introduced in the US in 1957. Now one million are handed out every minute, according to We Are What We Do, the not-for-profit group that was the driving force behind the Anya Hindmarch-designed reusable bag mentioned above. It is time we looked seriously at the alternatives.

Paper vs Plastic?

This section was adapted from a recent debate amongst some colleagues.....

It is first necessary to understand what happens when someone decides to make no further use of the bag. Plastic bags can in principle be reused many times more than paper ones.

In terms of environmental damage and pollution from the manufacturing process it would appear that plastic can be shown to be better than paper - that is on average - there are a lot of factors - but paper manufacture is a pretty dirty process. A University of Winnipeg study for example concluded that in their manufacture "paper bags are twice as energy intensive as a plastic one".

Paper bags are in principle more easily recyclable than plastic - both can be recycled, but both seldom are. Pretty even here. Although there is evidence to show that plastic bags contaminate our recycling stream, and dozens of people are needed to pull them off the conveyors, lest they jam the machinery.

In terms of disposal then plastic hangs around in the environment much longer and can do much more damage - this was the starting point for the plastic-bag-free town movement from Modbury already mentioned. Paper wins this round - it can also be composted. But what if this paper ends up in a landfill site? Well, it will degrade and you'll get methane produced. Maybe as much as 80% of methane produced in your average landfill site will get caught and burned
in a landfill gas engine, thus displacing fossil fuels at the cost of [we would hope] renewable CO2. But the other 20% will leak out and have an impact 20-23 times as great [landfill gas has a much larger Climate Change Potential than CO2.] In this case, we might be better off using
plastic as it just sits there and doesn't cause any more damage...

In terms of resource use both can use a recycled component, but the raw feedstock for plastic is of course a totally non-renewable resource. Again paper probably wins - but where is the pulp coming from - sustainably managed forests, or non-renewable forests?

Whats best?

So overall its a moot point. The best solution is perhaps unbleached fair-traded organic cotton (or jute) printed with good inks re-usable bags and then getting shopkeepers to use cornstarch bags for items requiring wet-wrap (fish, meat, hot items etc). Cornstarch performs
well but is about 10 times the price of plastic. Yes there are all sorts of problems with cornstarch - but for those items that need a wet-wrap it is an alternative - not for everything.
Our grandparents used to get meat and fish wrapped in paper by the butcher/fishmonger but a butcher tells me they can no longer get suitable paper and/or are not allowed to. See link mentioned above at the Modbury website on alternatives.

However as I've noted above perhaps most important of all plastic bags are symbolic of our wasteful society - we are in need of clear breaks with the waste society of the last few decades, and bags are something almost our whole society uses. Getting folk to question their packaging raises awareness and may make people more aware of other things they throw away.

Biodegradable plastic the answer?

In short, no. While bio plastics have an application in modern life (especially in farming), they are limited in their effect. They require high temperatures, a very specific pH and high levels of light to decompose, but such conditions rarely occur in natural environments, let alone sea, where there are lower temperatures and levels of sunlight. In an ocean environment, as in a landfill, biodegradable plastic will remain intact, causing damage to wildlife and ecosystems for many years.

What have others to say?

In California there is a campaign called 'The Bay versus The Bag' - see it here with videos and good info. Even the Daily Mail had a campaign against plastic bags - see here. There is also an excellent abolish plastic bags website and even a international day - see here - and even perhaps more surprisingly a save the plastic bag campaign site - see here for some interesting info that ultimately fails to persuade. To read Green party's Derek Wall's blog on this issue "To avoid danger of suffocation" see here. Justin King, chief executive of Sainsbury's writes here. Lastly a poem here about plastic bags.

Time to mine our seas for plastic?

This map shows how oceans suffer in graphic detail with all but 3.7 percent of the world's oceans affected by humans and some 41 percent of seas heavily affected by human activity (see original map here).

Threats, include climate change, overfishing, fertilizer runoff, coastal development, and shipping pollution. Researchers found only a few small areas near both poles remain relatively pristine - though, according to one coauthor, "they are not untouched." Plastic is one aspect of the human activity and you can see here an extraordinary article about mining the sea for plastic which could then be used via pyrolysis to convert to diesel!

What's the world's biggest landfill?

Well it covers an area at least a quarter of a million square miles... nearly three times the size of the UK. It's actually a slick of human debris in the sea, floating around in the Pacific starting from around 500 miles off the west coast of the US (see Schnews article here). It's caused by rubbish that gets caught up by spiraling underwater ocean currents, called a gyre, which draw it in from all around and trap it into a floating layer of filth near the surface of the ocean. SchNews suggest it might have been named by a Star Trek fan - the phenomenon has not been named 'Garbage Gyre' but given the more frightening tag of 'Trash Vortex'.

In 1979, the manufacture of plastic overtook that of steel. Today we use 20 times more plastic than we did 50 years ago. Each year, 100 million tonnes of plastic are used worldwide. We each dispose of 185lb of plastic every year.

Here is what SchNews said: Just how big it is a matter of hot debate. While many organisations cite it as being around the size of Texas, Charles Moore, the American oceanographer credited with first discovering it, has recently been quoted as claiming that it's now twice the size as continental United States, extending nearly all the way to Japan. Either way, its staggeringly big... Whilst some of the junk is stuff dumped by boats of one sort or another or off oil platforms, 80% of it originates from the land. It's caused by wind and rain taking trash from the land (and indeed landfills) into rivers, people dumping along the coasts, poor sewage treatment and waste from industry. Just how many millions of tons a year the Konsumer Kings of Krap discard into their vortex may be unknown, but with Californians alone using 19 billion plastic bags a year, there's no shortage of waste to go round. In fact around 90% of human pollution in the sea is plastic and this is far from fantastic news for sea-dwelling organisms and the ocean ecosystems. Made from a process using that ol' war-causing fossil fuel, oil, plastic is toxic to marine life and indestructible. While most plastics only officially take up to hundreds of years to degrade', the truth is they never actually chemically break down and return to the ecosystem at all - they just disintegrate into ever smaller pieces, making a deadly plastic dust. And it doesn't always have to wait so long to be dust; billions of tiny plastic pellets, called nurdles - the raw materials for the plastic industry - are lost or spilled every year, many ending up in the sea. These act like chemical sponges, soaking up other toxic man-made chemicals, all artificial pollutants (for toxicity think DDT pesticide etc), concentrating them up to a million times more than in normal sea water. Trawls of the Pacific vortex have revealed that for every pound of proto-plankton, the foundation of the marine ecosystem, in a given volume of water, there are six pounds of plastic waste. Plastic is therefore a catastrophic threat to the world's seas as stuff chucked away anytime in the last fifty years is still out there degrading somewhere. Waste caught up in the trash vortex, the gyre currents keeping it suspended in a plastic 'soup' near to the surface, is only the thin end of the widget. Around 70% of marine plastic waste sinks straight to the sea floor where it can slowly choke plant life and the animals that feed on it, unseen. According to the UN Environment Programme, plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, with countless fish and more than 100,000 whales, seals and turtles. Greenpeace have identified at least 267 separate species known to have suffered from entanglement or ingestion of marine debris. And before we get too cocky about how green and caring Europe is compared to their uncouth American cousins... they may not have vortices, but the North Sea is one of the most polluted seas in the world and the Mediterranean is the most plastic-polluted sea by density on the planet. Whether serious attempts to do anything about our constant adding to an already critical problem will really materialise before climate change or economic collapse give us a helping hand is anyone's guess (you can guess what we'd guess) - and so much damage has already been done. With respected journal 'Science' projecting that Earth's stocks of fish and seafood will collapse by 2048 if trends in overfishing and pollution continue, it looks like we're all gonna be sea sick soon.

For more from Greenpeace here. I think that is enough about plastic bags - if you got this far well done indeed!

It is still Zero Waste Week

I had planned to cover Zero Waste Week and participate - it is this week until 1st February. However it is black bag day today and we have failed dismally here in Ruscombe - indeed for the first time in many months we've managed to nearly fill a black bag - usually we can barely find enough to fill a third of the bag but a clear out last weekend and some guests all mean we have a full bag - embarrassing to put out? Maybe one day it really will be for all....

Photo: Gavin from the My Zero Waste website and their visit to the flagship programme in Bisley - an amazing collection of events

However I can report good news from the rest of the family where one of them participating in the challenge has, so far, only a few bits of plastic and a v small amount of food waste - not enough to even half fill a carrier bag. For another successful project where a family are seriously reducing their waste and have lots of ideas and discussion see over in the Forest of Dean:
http://myzerowaste.com/

Anyhow the Gloucestershire's Zero Waste Challenge aims to help us reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfill sites by challenging households to produce not a single item of waste during the week. More details here. It is a great initiative to highlight our waste and I am disappointed that I have not joined in this year - so can I also say that I am disappointed not to see others in the area doing the same - on my way to Stroud today there were still piles and piles of black bags...

Climate: time for real changes not ineffectual actions

This is a good article below from Climate Change Denial blogsite - reminding us about the need for the big actions - saving our environment requires action from everyone, at every level. I've been concerned about totemic gestures for a a while as they really add up to the picture we need. Nevertheless what they do achieve is the raising of public consciousness - and it is obvious that the profile of environmental issues has increased markedly over the last decade or so, and that the use of totemic gestures plays a big part in this.

As this article makes clear what we need to do now though is to move away from the increasing
trivialisation of environmental issues and look at these issues again in the light of robust lifecycle assessments - it is time to start making the big changes - that means taking decisions like no to Staverton Airport expansion, a massive shift in emphasis to public transport, schemes like Kirklees Councils free insulation to 30,000 householders and more....

DEATH OF A THOUSAND TIPS

George Marshall

We are constantly being told that easy personal actions will ‘save the climate’. The problem is that most of these “top ten tips” are ineffectual and play directly to our denial tendencies.

Take plastic bags for example. Live Earth, green groups and lifestyle features have constantly told us that we can ‘save the climate’ by re-using them or using designer “Bags for Life” instead. People get very worked up about this topic. There are eight petitions on the number 10 Website calling for them to be banned or taxed, Ireland has imposed a special bag tax, and a town in Devon has banned them outright.

Granted, plastic bags are ugly, wasteful and deadly to turtles. But their contribution to climate change is vanishingly small. The average Brit consumes 134 plastic bags a year, resulting in just two kilos of the typical 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide he or she will emit in a year. That is one five thousandth of their overall climate impact.

And then there are the electronics on standby. They are an attractive example of the waste of consumer culture but are hardly a major source of emissions. The electricity to keep a television in standby mode for a whole year leads to 25 kilogrammes of carbon dioxide. It’s more than plastic bags, but still very marginal: one fifth of one percent of average emissions.

Here’s another tip that sounds more substantial: fill your kettle with the right amount of water. The UK government made this one of the core messages of its 1999 “Are You Doing Your Bit?” campaign. A very small bit as it turns out. According to the government’s own figures even if you are constantly boiling full kettles this will save all of 100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year, less than one percent of average emissions.

Now please don’t misunderstand me. All of these actions are worth doing as part of a green lifestyle. But it is a serious distortion to imply, as the top ten lists usually do, that there is any equivalence between these lifestyle preferences and the serious decisions that really reduce emissions –stopping flying, living close to work and living in a well insulated house.

Judging by the latest MORI poll data link…. , people have already acquired a severely distorted sense of priorities. 40% of people now believe that recycling domestic waste, which is a relatively small contributor to emissions, is the most important thing they can do to prevent climate change. Only 10% mention the far more important goals of reducing foreign holidays or using public transport.

This easy tips undermine the wider message on the seriousness of climate change. In its report on climate change messaging, “Warm Words”, the Institute of Public Policy Research argues that simple actions “easily lapse into ‘wallpaper’– the domestic, the routine, the boring, the too-easily understood and ignorable”. The IPPR is especially critical of headlines such as ‘20 things you can do to save the planet from destruction’ and said that putting trivial measures alongside alarmist warnings can lead people to “deflate, mock and reject” the very notion of climate change”.

And there is a greater danger that people might adopt the simple measures as a way to avoid making more challenging lifestyle changes. In regards of recycling MORI concluded that it was becoming “a ‘totem behaviour” and that “individuals use recycling as a means of discharging their responsibility to undertake wider changes in lifestyle”. In other words, people can adopt the simplest solutions as a part of a deliberate denial strategy that enables them to feel virtuous without changing their real behaviour.

Imagine that we converted this approach into another intractable problem: smoking. Suppose a new campaign against smoking showed graphic images of people dying of lung cancer followed by the punchline: It’s Easy to Be Healthy- Smoke One Less Cigarette a Month.

We know without a moment’s reflection that this campaign would fail. The target is so ludicrous, and the disconnection between the images and the message is so great, that most smokers would just laugh it off.

So why then do well intentioned schools, councils and green groups – and let’s face it, Live Earth was an eight hour tip-fest - persist in promoting such ineffectual actions?

Their logic is as follows. Simple actions capture people’s attention and provide an entry level activity. Present people with the daunting big ticket items and they turn away. Give them something easy and possible and you have them moving in the right direction and, in theory, ready for the next level.

Well that is the theory but, as plentiful social research confirms, it doesn’t work. For one thing making the solutions easy is no guarantee that anyone will do them. The government spent £22 million on the ‘Do Your Bit’ campaign and has subsequently admitted that it produced no measurable change in personal behaviour.

And the argument that small actions are the automatic route to larger ones seems daft to my mind – like the old argument that cannabis leads to heroin. The people who do big actions were probably on that trajectory anyway, and most people get stuck on the small ones, happy to fool themselves that they have fulfilled their obligations.

Of course the real reason that the small steps approach is backed with government money is that it appears to be non-political. It is safe, domestic and non-threatening. It provides the appearance of action without challenging any powerful interests.

But no major social or economic change has ever arisen from volunteerism and the suggestion that it can is a deliberate strategy to prevent any real challenge to business as usual.

Take Ireland for example- a country where emissions have risen a quarter since 1990 – double the generous increase allowed under Kyoto. The response of the Irish government? A multi-million euro PR campaign called The Power of One link… which offers ‘ten top tips’ to ‘make a difference’. The tips include such earth shattering proposals as: unplug your mobile charger, fully fill your dishwasher and don’t overfill your kettle. That sounds much nicer than curtailing roadbuilding or industrial growth. They are not called ‘easy tips’ for nothing.

So let’s start again from first principle. We have to rethink the way we talk about climate change. It is insulting to assume that people can only be energized with the pint sized options. We need to present all lifestyle changes as part of a radical vision for a smart, healthy and just 21^st century.

Let’s be clear that voluntary action will never be enough - we will need radical political economic and social change. So let’s start with that wretched phrase ‘you can save the planet’. Who wants to be the first town to ban it?

This is a revamped and more opinionated version of an article that was published in The Guardian on September 13th 2007 Link… The Guardian also commissioned a counter piece which led to a discussion of the merits of ’small actions’ link… Mike Tidwell has also written a great critique of small steps for Grist magazine which led to an intense debate link…

Tesco 'green' research misses fact that supermarkets are part of the problem

Tesco is going to fund 77 academic posts in "green" research with a £25m donation to Manchester University - however it doesn't take a university to work out that supermarkets are a huge part of the problem. Read what Green party Principal Speaker Derek Wall had to say on this here.

Photo: Poster in window of Bristol home

Certainly there are so many things that supermarkets could be doing more - take packaging - there is a voluntary agreement - The Courtauld Commitment to redress excess packaging by 92%. It has failed miserably - I have to agree with those who say that such voluntary agreements are usually a way corporations avoid their responsibilities.... and what about plastic bags...

Anyhow just read the Coop will save 8 tonnes of plastic every year by being the first retailer to launch naked cucumbers - no shrink-wrapped plastic around them - it is part of other moves to reduce packaging - all good stuff but too slow! Come on Sainsbury's, Tesco and the others it is time for naked fruit and veg.

Petition to charge 10p for plastic bags

Mayor Marjoram in Stroud is still pushing to make Stroud the second plastic bag free town - here is a national petition calling for a tax on plastic bags like in Ireland.

People in Britain use an average of 300 plastic bags every year. Each bag lasts up to 400 years, spending the vast majority of that time in a landfill site or strewn across the British countryside.

In Ireland, a tax of 15cents per bag resulted in a 90% drop in plastic bag usage, and raised 3.5 million Euros which was spent on environmental projects. Bangladesh has banned polythene bags altogether while Taiwan and Singapore are taking steps to discourage their use. See my letter to press on this earlier in the year here.

Please take a moment to sign the petition to introduce a similar tax (to be spent on environmental projects) of 10p per bag in Britain. Go to: http://www.green-england.co.uk/plasticbagpetition

Recycling in Stroud: where are we going?

I've not had time to keep this blog up to date recently with all the meetings. Some might say already there are too many entries each day and that perhaps I don't need to keep it up to date??! Anyhow I did want to touch on a Green party meeting last week when we invited one of the Council's officers to share the Council's policies re waste and recycling.

Photo: Stone circle made of fridges, Sante Fe

I've adapted the minutes of the meeting kindly put together by Rosie, the Green party's Secretary. I've turned them into questions which will hopefully give a flavour and also answer some of those questions that get posed regularly....I've also added some comments in green but each of the topics could be an essay in itself so it is really only a taster and all rather hurriedly thrown together - am happy to explain more if people email me or leave a comment on this blog.

For me the meeting was useful in helping the Green District Council group focus on the areas that need more action: infact we are working on a paper at the moment.

Does the District Council do enough to encourage people to be committed recyclers? Can we expect the County to be fined?

Photo: What a waste: no proper furniture recycling in the District (see below link to meetings I've had re this issue).

SDC has up to now been one of the leading recyclers in the country, with a comprehensive kerbside collection, and was regarded by many as a green Council. However, it was conceded that there was a long way for the District to go, and said that this year and next people would be targeted to encourage their neighbours to recycle more, therefore utilising existing capacity. The Government is under a lot of pressure from the EU over biowaste diversion, with targets now set for Local Authorities to divert biowaste from landfill. 68% of an average household bin consists of potentially biodegradable materials. The onus is now on the County Councils to reach biodegradable waste targets and they are liable to large fines if these targets are not met. The first target year for this is to be 2010, and Councils will be fined £150 per tonne over the target figure. Local Authorites are starting to look at waste in terms of carbon footprint rather than recycling rates.

Britain is very much the 'dirty man' of Europe with 7 million more tonnes going to landfill than any other EU country. Other countries are doing better - our Government has let us down badly - the goal should be that practically everything produced will be re-used or recycled, and not incinerated or sent to landfill. Already, New Zealand, Western Australia, California, Toronto and even a couple of English local authorities have adopted a target of Zero Waste by 2020. If we go whole-heartedly for recycling, re-use and waste minimisation, the health problems associated with landfill sites and incinerators will soon become a thing of the past.

A large part of the problem for the District is the failure of our Government to move on excess packaging, have proper targets and develop markets for recycling etc etc. SDC has not met their Government targets for recycling for 2007 - they could have done this by collecting garden waste - but see below - it was right not to go that route. However I am, still disappointed that very little has changed in terms of recycling collection in the last few years. Figures are static: yes there are enormous problems especially in finding markets for waste collected but bolder moves could be made in tackling supermarkets, promoting community composting, kitchen waste etc. However one statistic that looks better is that householders waste does not appear to be rising in Stroud like some areas: we are composting, reusing and recycling more.

What about garden waste?

The District Council recognises this issue and tries to divert as much biodegradable waste as possible. It was observed that garden waste should be home composted if possible rather than being collected, but some Councils like the Forest of Dean collect it because they can quickly increase recycling targets massively. Yet the whole waste stream is also increased massively leading to more collections etc. SDC have not done this, but reached a rate of 23.5 % without including garden waste.

SDC do provide pre-paid garden waste bags but the contents are landfilled as there is no takers for the waste at present. At the moment no more than 400 tonnes of garden waste was currently going to landfill, which SDC considered a good figure. Cotswold District Council collection scheme was not a successful way of dealing with garden waste, when measured in kilos per household that were collected.

The District should be applauded for not going down the garden waste route. Their 23.5% figure is good for dry recyclables but there are still others doing better and we should be doubling that much sooner than planned.

What about kitchen waste collection?

SDC are now looking at food waste diversion, with a trial in the Stanleys of weekly collections for kitchen waste and dry recyclables, with residual waste being collected fortnightly. In terms of collection dry waste would be divided up into dry recyclables and residual waste, while kitchen waste would be dealt with by the use of bins with lockable lids. Food would be collected in kitchen caddies with three biodegradable liners provided each week, and when a liner was full it would be emptied into the bin outside, which would then be collected. In-vessel composting would be used in order to kill any pathogens, and all food waste, both animal and vegetable, could be collected and processed in this way.

Weekly collections will get around opposition from people who dislike smell. It will be interesting to see how this develops - it has taken far too long to get this pilot off the ground - mainly it has to be said due to problems outside the Districts control.

In Bristol (where a food waste collection scheme was in use) everything that used to be home-composted now goes into food bins, so home-composting had actually been reduced. How can we stop that here?

It is inevitable under such a scheme.

What about labels on the food bins reminding people to compost vegetable and garden matter?

Why not more plastics? And cardboard?

The reason plastics (other than bottles) were not collected is because there is no market for them. Some types of plastics have low productivity, or a combination of polymers, or are contaminated with food, and so do not represent quality materials. Plastic bottles are usually sent abroad. Councils have to give the reprocessors, especially paper merchants, what they want, and a collection of materials together is generally unacceptable. With regard to cardboard, there are different types of cardboard that have to be sent to different places. The whole picture regarding plastics and cardboard was complicated as they come in many forms and types and so cannot necessarily be lumped together.

Why aren't black bags biodegradable?

Plastic black sacks which go out are non-biodegradable and cost 3p each, whereas with a biodegradable alternative the cost would be three times as high.

See my blog 1st Nov re why SDC say they have to deliver each week a bin bag rather than a packet of them each 3 months or so.

What fuel is used by collection lorries?

There is to be a new fleet of refuse vehicles in SDC in 2009 which run on biodiesel.

I have concerns even though SDC plan to use local supplies - See my blog on 9th May 2007 re biofuels and why they are not as good as some think.

Have you tackled supermarkets on their packaging?

Packaging was recognised as a serious issue and a discussion took place on how supermarkets and other retailers can be encouraged to reduce their packaging or to use packaging that can be dealt with within the District.

Many countries, like Germany, have also successfully introduced legislation to restrict unnecessary packaging while our supermarkets seem to package stuff even more. There are some initiatives that are to be welcomed but I would like to see SDC take more of a lead on this - maybe meet supermarket managers? Or perhaps publicly support Mayor Marjoram's call for no more plastic bags - see a recent letter of mine re bags. Whilst the impact of reduced plastic bag use on CO2 emissions might be negligable it is a very useful awareness raising exercise. Everything we do has impact and implications. Thinking through the act of using and abusing plastic bags is one way to learn to take more responsibility for our individual actions and to live more lightly on the planet. Not just an end in itself but a first step on a new path.

Is incineration on the cards?

It was confirmed that the County Council had not completely ruled out the use of incineration.

I am very concerned by this and am at present trying to find out more. Greens are wholly opposed to incineration, although there is possibly a place for a v small amount of waste going to pyrolasis. We have written much in past on this - see for example recent report here and campaign to stop Newhaven incinerator which plans to send it's waste to Gloucestershire.

How can we encourage more composting?

Photo: Bisley Community Compost scheme

SDC are working with Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust on the idea of "compost champions".

See also more here re Bisley's community composting scheme. This idea should be being promoted much more.

What about Tetra Paks?

Tetra Pak bins were to be introduced to local authorities and will be emptied free of charge; five sites were to be found for these within SDC.

This will hopefully please a Randwick resident that has been lobbying SDC on this - see here.

Business waste? What else?

The 'y-waste' social enterprise scheme was now up and running for business waste. It would be good to see more people recognise achievements locally and support SDCs moves to encourage higher recycling rates.

Business waste needs considerably more attention - more government action - also tackling consumerism is a huge key issue and needs addressing in many different ways: tool share ideas and freecycle networks, more encouragement to support charity shops and car boots, more furniture recycling and....well I'll write more on that another time.....

Litter pick-up, litter policies and smokefree legislation implications

This post starts with the litter pick-up then looks at smokefree legislation and other litter policy issues....

Yesterday afternoon our Elfin group did a litter pick-up around the canal and river opposite Waitrose. Rodborough Parish lent all the litter pick up sticks - the rain didn't deter us from getting several bin liners of rubbish.

Photos: Woodcraft Folk Elfin group doing a litter pick-up at Frome Bank by the canal near Waitrose

Smokefree legislation set to increase litter problems

Smokefree legislation comes into force on 1 July 2007. Cigarette litter is currently the most common type of litter - present on 79% of streets. I have written the following to Council officers who are already on the case:

I note that the Council appears to be getting to grips with new legislation re smoking. While in the long-term this will hopefully result in reduced cigarette litter, it is likely in the short-term to increase as smokers are forced outdoors.

Clearly timing a "no-litter" campaign with the smokefree legislation will provide added impetus to its success. I would be interested to hear more re what plans are in place.

You will probably be aware that in Scotland, the smoking ban - now over a year old - has led to a proliferation of "smokers' shelters", some of which are erected at evening time by clubs and pubs and removed before the morning. Is this something that has been discussed? How will we view such structures?

All the best - Philip


I note there is also a motion to Council next week to ensure premises have ashtrays outside - having read the guidelines, 'Preventing Cigarette Litter in England', I will be checking that advice is also given re the right type of ashtray - see below the advice on seven approaches to tackle cigarette litter.

Litter remains a serious problem - things have improved in the District but we over a year ago a local campaign and website set up to get tough on the issue. At that time I had email correspondence with David Dowse the guy behind the campaign - infact at the time I got carried away in writing a response which I'll enclose below.

In terms of rubbish it maybe worth noting that the streets have a regular cleaning programme by Stroud District Council: this varies according to use - for example twice daily outside shops on both Westward Road and in Cashes Green, weekly in Cainscross car park, every 6-8 weeks for most other roads and footpaths mostly looked at if a problem is reported. In addition some Parishes like Cainscross supplement these services with a litter picker employed by the Parish for 12 to 15 hours per week.

As for rubbish bins, they are usually emptied daily in key sites while others are emptied on a weekly basis. Fly tipping is minimal in our area, nevertheless a problems do exist like at the top of Ash Lane.

Seven approaches to cigarette litter:

Ashtrays - The main message is 'choose the right ashtray'. The placement, design and visibility of the ashtray are the key determining factors as to whether it is used or not.

Signage - There needs to be clear and consistent "no-littering" signage, as well as signage indicating smokefree buildings.

Cleansing - Keep litter hotspots clean, this will encourage use of bin and ashtrays (Chartered Institution of Wastes Management provides further Cleansing Guidelines - see links).

Partnerships - Plan a "no-litter" campaign with existing partnerships and local businesses. In particular, engage businesses such as cafés, bars and pubs that will be most effected by the smokefree legislation.

Be a leader - Lead by example by running an internal campaign and providing smokers in your own organisation with suitable ashtrays.

Educate - Provide information on the problem of cigarette litter, encouraging them to change their behaviour. The guidelines provide further details on planning, targeting and shaping a campaign.

Enforcement - Local authorities can use these measures to deal with smoking litter:
* the offence of dropping litter
* fixed penalty notices
* duty to clear land of litter and refuse and to keep highways clean
* street litter control notices.

My response the new website set up by David Dowse (18/01/06), a resident of the Downfield area in Stroud who feels strongly that something has to be done about the worsening litter problems that blight our area.

Greens welcome this initiative to highlight litter problems in Stroud. Litter can have a huge detrimental impact on a community. We would welcome more cross-party support particularly for some of the underlying issues around litter and waste.

Our approach to litter is on a number of levels:

1. Local initiatives relating to litter

Greens on the Town and District Council have been involved in a number of issues relating to litter. In particular they have:

- pressed SDC for more Street Cleaning/washing in Town Centre as have traders and others: the streets should be cleansed, that isn't just litter picked but any other material (dog faeces, chewing gum, vomit, blood etc) washed off as a matter of coarse. Town centre streets should be wash regularly as part of the DC's responsibility. It should not be left to the Town Council to pay for street washing. Greater attention should be paid to the edges of buildings and corners where debris accumulates and to removing cigarette ends.
- got extra Dog Bins, waste paper baskets and also helped get cigarette stubbers on the existing bins.
- initiated a move to stop further take-aways getting planning permission in the town centre. They would support moves to encourage the owners of offending businesses to clear up their mess and wider laws to encourage more sustainable packaging through tax laws.
- supported the proposed Pop Up Pissoir - to reduce numbers of men using shop doorways.
- helped organise in the past a series of litter picks led by councillors
- more education of the public is required and should be a key element of any programme to tidy up the town (see point 3 below)
- Greater Co-operation of the police in issuing penalty notices should be sought
- in residential areas, more effort should be put in to obtaining the removal of cars from streets when cleaning streets- a warning both in evening prior to cleaning and another on the morning of cleaning.

Greens would like to see a zero-waste policy adopted locally (see section 2 below and much more on our websites)

2. Litter reduction

First and foremost we need to reduce the supply of litter - if it does not exist people cannot drop it. There is so much more potential litter created now than even 30 years ago, also much more is non biodegradable. In the past if someone threw away an apple core it rotted away now people throw away sweet wrappers and take-away packaging which do not rot. Canned drinks have replaced drinks in returnable bottles.

Waste should be seen as a resource in disguise: it represents a failure of our processes and products and a loss of money. Indeed the entire concept of waste should be eliminated from our thinking and the word resource be substituted.

Thomas Love Peacock, author wrote: "The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity."

Our current policies show a totally unacceptable disregard for future generations. As a society we are producing more waste than ever before. When something is thrown away we lose the natural resources, the energy and the time used to make the product: these resources cannot go on indefinitely. Already oil companies are warning us of steep prices to come as oil supplies dwindle over the coming years.

When something is thrown away we also put pressure on the environment's ability to cope like extracting new resources and the huge impacts associated with getting rid of our rubbish. Just one litre of oil can pollute a million litres of fresh drinking water. While glass, for example takes thousands of years to break down but recycling two bottles saves enough energy to boil water for five cups of tea.

Stroud, once a beacon of Green ideas, has slipped significantly. In the 2004/5 we came 194th out of 393 councils for recycling with only 20.88% recycled. Forest of Dean managed 30% and many councils are getting close to 50%. See here. Although it should be noted the Forest figures are higher because they include green waste.

The UK is also at the bottom of EU recycling tables.

Flytipping is another key problem: every month there are 75,000 incidents of illegal rubbish dumping in England, according to data published last year by the government. Local authorities say the mess is costing them almost £100 a minute to clean up. Our government is in part to blame for not enacting an easy solution: manufacturers should be responsible for dealing with the waste that their product ultimately becomes. For more see here.

Last month the Department of Trade and Industry was embarrassed for the third time in 18 months when it again delayed implementing the European Waste electric and electronic directive, claiming industry was not ready. The laws, expected to come into force this year, will force manufacturers to take back and recycle everything from toasters and televisions to computers and mobile phones.

One other key problem re waste in the County is the lack of coordination. District councils responsible for some aspects, other bodies for other aspects - basically recycling rules baffle councils and public alike. Leadership by our government is noticeably lacking.

The Green party want to see a Zero Waste Strategy: this has already been adopted by Councils in this country and abroad. Zero Waste is about supporting reducing extraction from, and eliminating waste to, nature, improving economic efficiency and making more resources available to all. Indeed underlying all of this is not only the issue of resource depletion but also climate change.

The well known rallying cry is "Reuse, reduce and recycle." Yet so far we've seen very little action at government level. There are many ways this could be encouraged, not least by legislation. Some examples already proposed by Greens and others include:

- on-street recycling introduced where appropriate. In other areas litter bins are being introduced with separate compartments for paper, glass, cans and plastic. The removal of recycling bins from Fawkes Place was opposed.
- Local 'swap' days to be held
- Improved recycling collections
- "Money-back" schemes for the return of glass bottles and other reusable containers to be introduced.
- Plastic bags to be taxed at 10p a bag like in the Republic of Ireland.
- More reuse and refurbishment centres, for furniture and electrical goods, such as cookers and washing machines
- Incentives for using real nappies. These alone constitute around 5% of the volume of domestic waste. See here.
- Encourage and subsidise new business ventures which reuse waste materials.
- Encouraging retailers to reduce and reuse consumer packaging. Greens in Germany for example shifted some responsibility of waste disposal onto the manufacturer; packaging use decreased by 17%.
- Neighbourhoods encouraged to share and reuse "waste" building and DIY materials (wood, piping, paint etc) through the use of community sheds as collection points.
- Council support of cost-price compost bins to local residents to recycle organic materials, where possible sourcing them from local reused waste materials.
- Community composting schemes will be set up in co-operation with local allotment associations.

3. Public education

Public education campaigns, as mentioned already, are needed to reduce resource consumption and increase the reuse and recycling of waste. It is clear that so far we are failing to get the message across to people about why we need to reduce our waste and recycle. We really cannot go on living in this throw-away fashion: future generations will have every justification for judging us harshly.

Education needs to start when children are young and made easy to continue in adulthood. It should be 'cool' to recycle. Incentives like those mentioned above such as deposits and eco taxes can help - but people need to understand why if they are to support such moves.

4. Our communities

Litter is clearly not the only problem in our streets. As the author and English Heritage Commissioner, Bill Bryson, said: “Nothing says more, nor more immediately, of how a nation feels about itself, than the way it dresses its streets.”

The clutter in our streets like redundant and unnecessary signs, adds to the way we feel about a place. Reducing it can improve road safety, reduce crime and improve local economies. There are two reports that go into this in more detail by myself and Stroud District councillor Sarah Lunnon, entitled: "Better Streets for Stroud District". They are available free from: www.glosgreenparty.org.uk

I consider this approach could have a profound effect by rebuilding our local communities - and indeed long term could do more to tackle litter than a host of other policies!

5. The 'Respect agenda'

'Respect' has indeed broken down in many areas, sometimes to a frightening level. However Greens do not support Labour's current approach.

It is interesting that Tony Blair chose not to ask why communities seem so much stronger in France, Sweden, Germany or Italy - countries that record less fear of crime and tens of thousands fewer people in jail. The bonds have broken here not because they are out of date, but because Blair and his predecessors snapped them. They encouraged schools to sell playing fields, curbed youth work and stripped parish and municipal leadership of power.

Add to this the effect of rising inequality: the present government has still not begun to undo the increases in income inequality of the Thatcher and Major years. There is now incontrovertible evidence that higher inequality is regularly accompanied by more violence, lower trust and poorer community relations.

Labour's approach is one of social reform on the cheap: alcohol bans on buses, 'cashpoint fines', curfews, parenting orders and Asbos. The entire essence of Blair's new plan is punitive and is about increasing police powers. He has also plumbed new depths in its disregard for civil rights: reversing a fundamental principle, the burden of proof. An increasing number of professionals are also arguing that Asbos actually damage some communities and do not tackle the problems.

We cannot enforce a "respect" agenda: indeed any attempts to enforce conformity on young people would be likely to backfire. Indeed, it can be argued that some parents and 'authority' figures don't deserve the respect of their children. Respect is not given as a result of demands, fines or threats - it has to be earned.

Dr David Webster at the University of Gloucestershire recently wrote: "When politicians bombard us with gimmicks, with re-announced initiatives that leave underlying problems unaddressed, they treat us like children and insult our intelligence, and that is no way to earn to earn respect, never mind demand it."

To tackle anti-social behaviour we need to tackle the causes. To engender self respect we must rebuild communities, that are now too often devoid of the decent basic amenities (clean, safe streets, youth clubs, community centres, medical centres, banks, decent schools and shops). Many social problems are significantly alleviated when people are lifted out of the cycle of poverty, unemployment and crime. When people feel that they have a stake in society - something to lose and things to aim for which they believe they can achieve - then they make positive contributions.

Yet plans for devolution of local finance like other aspects of power seem to have been shelved again. Britain remains one of the most centralised 'democracies' in the world.

Furthermore Labour plan schools - the very institutions crucial to discipline - are to be made independent of our local communities. As Simon Jenkins wrote in The Guardian (11/01/06): "Withdraw responsibility from communities and you withdraw authority. Withdraw authority and you do not get placid submission to Blair's "summary power". You get anarchy. You get Basra. Does Downing Street never learn?"

We already know how to tackle the root causes of these 'anti-social' behaviours, but social justice and equality is expensive. We need politicians not afraid to call for the long-term measures of alleviating poverty, investing seriously in public education and the police.