John CRAWFORD He’s old school and we’re proud of it
Wash my mouth out with soap, but don’t ask me to wash a nappy...
MY training under a Municipal Engineer involved a wide range of tasks - including joining Saltcoats Burgh tug-of-war team for the heats of the the BBC ‘It’s a Knockout’ show in 1972.
We were thoroughly thrashed by Lanark Burgh, who’d anchored their team to a 28 stone Street Sweeper. When he got fed up waving to the crowds he simply took a step backwards and pulled us into a heap.
But nothing prepared me for a job I was given when I returned to Ayrshire in 1996. Word came along from the Chief Executive’s Offi ce: “As you’ll know, we’re setting up a Council-wide Womens’ Forum and she’d like you to lead the Offi cers’ Working Group.”
8 million disposable nappies are thrown away every day in the UK.
I hightailed it along the corridor to see her. I explained I didn’t have the credentials (no further information needed) to be in this team.
She was adamant my leadership ‘would send out a clear message that the new Council was committed to treating both sexes equally.’
It wasn’t easy, as many of the females from the education and social services had fi xed ideas about the Forum, including the view there shouldn’t be men involved (I asked them to lobby the Chief to have me
removed, but they wouldn’t go that far).
Most of the meetings were chaired with me on tenderhooks, trying to avoid the pitfalls of uttering an inappropriate remark - never mind my habit of using sweary words which was a legacy of decades working in the waste business.
Things came to a head one day when they were debating the pros and cons of childminders, and a case (that I mentioned in last November’s column) where kids were returned each night with a load of dirty nappies rather than the Childminder hiring a commercial waste bin from us.
I casually mentioned I’d never changed a nappy in my life, which was a cause for them to take a sharp intake of breath. The zealots’ eyes lit up at the possibility they’d fi nally found evidence I was a chauvinistic rascal and unfi t to lead the group.
Then I hit them with the punchline: “Actually I’ve no children, so have never needed to change a nappy!”
All this baloney is designed to focus attention on the fact 8 million disposable nappies are thrown away every day in the UK.
This is a statistic all the green pundits and tree-huggers have been tactically ignoring, while banging on about food waste, deposit return schemes for drinks containers, the 5p carrier bag charge and other trendy ways of saving the planet.
It’s estimated the landfi ll degradation time for these nappies is hundreds of years, so I’m delighted to see new companies selling reusable cloth nappies.
Their problem is many young parents have
been infl uenced by their Grandparents’ tales of the old days (when nappies had to be soaked and boiled and fi xed with safety pins), whereas today’s versions can be washed at 40c and are ready for re-use.
But there’s an increasing number (around 30%) of families now buying around 15 of these nappies every two years, instead of 6,000 disposables.
Will we see one of the daily tabloids taking up a crusade against disposable nappies (just as they pile in to the ‘jobsworth Councils who refuse to empty our bins every week’?)
Time will tell, but suffi cient publicity from both central and local government (and perhaps some selective, environmentally- driven tax on disposable nappies) might make all the diff erence.
It looks like a no-brainer to me - but of course I wouldn’t be doing the additional laundry!
JOHN trained at Saltcoats Burgh in the late 60s. After a decade he moved to PD Beatwaste Ltd/ Wimpey Waste Management Ltd. He then joined the Civil Engineering Dept at Strathclyde University before posts at Renfrew, Hamilton, Inverness and East Ayrshire Councils.
A Fellow of CIWM, he served on its Scottish Centre Council from 1988- 2009. He is a Fellow of the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland and was their President between 1991-92
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SHM July, 2017
www.skiphiremagazine.co.uk
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