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We need to get the facts on recycling
• RE: Estates the losers in recycling ‘lottery’ (CNJ, March 29).
Up to the last local election there was no mention in any leaflets or manifestos pushed through the letterboxes on this estate that it was getting rid of the above to save money and to still continue with it on the side streets.
Notice not a whisper from anyone who proclaim they represent tenant’s interests, I suppose it depends what hat you are wearing at the time. Silence is deafening.
I hope money saved will be used to improve services, such as replacing the aged old benches here etc.
ETHEL HORACEK
Camden Park Road, NW1
• THE letter from Councillor Mike Greene (Here’s how recycling works, March 29) is a fudge that fools no one.
“The recycleable materials from all over the borough are taken to a local recycling depot” he says clearly, and then in the same sentence slides neatly into the evasive “and on to a site called a materials recovery facility” where there is sorting by hand.
This appears to be a not very clever attempt at sidestepping the key issue of where the hand sorting is done and by whom. The web site Cllr Green refers us to is even more evasive.
So I now challenge Cllr Greene to say clearly and unambiguously where Camden’s refuse is sorted by hand and by whom. At the same time can he put his name to an assurance that it is not in China by prison labour?
BARRY FOX
Belsize Grove, NW3
• IN reply to your reader who asks how Camden sorts refuse and separates card, plastic, glass etc (Who sorts recycling? Mar 22). I have seen technical documents which make it clear that most refuse is still sorted by hand.
I haven’t seen any technical documents on separation. But a few weeks ago my local Tesco megastore (at Gillette Corner, on the A4) replaced the recycling skips with a recycling machine, which includes two small openings for glass, metal, and plastic.
The sorting is evidently being attempted by the machine, though I don’t know how effective it is.
Tesco’s apparent belief that customers are unable to distinguish glass, metal, and plastic calls into question their motives in offering more flavours of washing-up liquid than condoms – why can I no longer buy unflavoured detergent?
The enormous installation has been slated because the openings are small, and the recorded voice acknowledging each insertion insists that items are deposited singly. So, instead of tossing in a couple of carrier bags full of milk bottles and other household plastics, you’re expected to deposit each bottle in turn, waiting impatiently for each one while the machine attempts to diagnose how to sort it.
As carrier bags might clog the sorting mechanism, they have to be stuffed into a separate aperture, which is too high for anyone in a wheelchair to reach.
Some boroughs have included plastics in their door-to-door collections for years.
Would it not be much simpler if all boroughs did this?
JOHN HUNT
Twickenham Road, Isleworth, TW7 |
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