JOHN CRAWFORD
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 their 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.
Practising what you preach!
I WAS disappointed (but not all that surprised) at the amount of litter and rubbish (Scots would call it a ‘midden’) left behind after the Glastonbury Festival. This was despite Sir David Attenborough - who has done far more to raise environmental awareness than all the ‘celebs’ (fading or otherwise) who’ve latched onto one of the most popular public concerns ‒ having had centre stage.
If, as it seems, the party-goers didn’t take his message to heart, then it looks like all the activists’ protest marches and publicity stunts aren’t really working.
Only the law of unfortunate coincidences would create a situation where the CEO of an international waste management company published a positive and informative article on Scottish waste recycling performances in the same week news broke that his company had been fined for exporting ‘contaminated’ recyclate to China. I have a lot of sympathy for him as I’ve railed here in the past about the difficulties in warranting the quality of recyclate streams. One of the ‘contaminants’ cited was disposable
nappies and whenever I see online commentary about ‘poisonous plastics’ etc, I always ask why nobody ever seems bothered about the millions of tonnes of these nappies we landfill every year? And nobody ever takes me up on it!
I continue to wonder why nobody in the popular press campaigning for ‘bans’ on plastic, or deposit return schemes ever asks where the returned/recovered material is to be re-processed? We don’t have enough installed treatment capacity and, for me, the starting point would be to calibrate our capacity with the future quantities of anticipated product.
And nobody seems to ask why people are buying so much bottled water? I don’t subscribe to the argument that it’s because there aren’t enough public drinking water fountains. I suspect that the bottled water industry flourishes because many public supplies have taste and colour characteristics that (although the supplies meet EU standards) the public finds unattractive. If not, then why not simply refill your plastic bottle from the tap before you leave home?
But sometimes the straightforward approach doesn’t work. In April last year I mentioned the Aberdeenshire Litter Initiative who were fed up removing litter and rubbish from land they thought their Council should be cleaning as a matter of routine. So they used the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to apply for a Litter Abatement Order using evidence gleaned from years of collecting and removing litter. Not only did the Sheriff throw their case out, he then asked the Council if they wanted to ask for damages (they did) and so the Initiative has had to close. 15 years with around 650 volunteers (the largest volunteer litter group in the UK) is now down the drain. Meanwhile the Council is conducting a public consultation on a ‘Litter Prevention Action Plan’ that includes proposals to ‘work with community groups...’ The volunteers must be wondering what was/is the point of it all?
We need to get real if we want to save the planet.
54
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
