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Plainly we should ditch the green box and take up the black sack again
• I WAS totally horrified to read the letters regarding recycling of reusable waste!
We were urged, by various leaflets put through our letterboxes, to separate very carefully any recyclable items and put them in the green boxes we had been issued with, not into the black sacks used for household refuse.
We were further advised that it would be helpful if the recyclable items could be separated into individual plastic carrier bags within the green boxes, to make sorting of the recyclable items easier.
We were instructed to put out our household refuse on a designated day of the week, late at night, so that it would be easier for the collection lorries to pick up the refuse very early the following morning before there was much traffic about. For the same reason, the collection lorries emptying our green boxes were also sent out very early in the morning, on a different day of the week.
Ever since then, most residents in the borough have followed these instructions to the letter. Now it appears that it’s “all moonshine” – all the recyclable items are simply jumbled up – glass, plastic, paper, cardboard, tins, all together, and that the resulting “goo” is virtually impossible to recycle anyway, and is therefore of no use whatever and will probably end up in a landfill either here or in another country. Think of the cost of all those green boxes which are now superfluous!
Why then should the householder have to bother about recycling anything? This scheme has now unmistakably been dropped, a complete waste of time and money!
Plainly, we should now abandon the green box scheme completely and revert to putting out black bags of mixed refuse on the appropriate days, just as we had done for decades before, when the black bag scheme first began – in about 1965 as far as I can remember. In any case, a great deal of refuse (fast food containers, old newspapers, broken carrier bags, bottles, drink cans/cartons etc) never gets anywhere near any black sack, it’s simply dropped to the ground when and where the eater/drinker/reader doesn’t need it any more, and this refuse is, hopefully, swept up by the street sweepers.
Then I assume it just goes to landfill as it always has done. All too soon we shall be seeing refuse mountains in what little countryside is left in Britain, just as there are in many impoverished Far East countries.
Name and address supplied, NW1
• I support Councillor Paul Braithwaite (Sustainability should be at the heart of our agenda, May 22).
I find the current method of co-mingling our recyclables to be unnatural and wrong and I suspect that many of Camden’s residents feel the same.
It’s time to replace this method of collection and address the food waste issue as well.
Catherine Hays
Camden Square, NW1
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