We do not get doorstep collection for recycling plastic, though there are skips in the village. I normally walk down there with one of Sainsbury’s extra large gusseted bags for life full of plastic, which after all is not heavy. And provided it has not been raining, there is a pleasant off the road track to walk down
Bottles have been piling up this last month, what with my back injury & all that analgesic cola – and the RAIN!*?*!
By Friday I had to do something about it
The walk was harder than I expected so I was prompted into thinking: There must be a better way to do this, what with plastic now being so expensive they are talking about mining old rubbish tips
My first thought was some kind of reward card scheme for recycling. But I think that the requirements that it should not be too bureaucratic, offer rewards which are useful to, welcomed by, the recipients, but not really valuable enough to attract criminals in an area of economic activity which has more than its fair share already, & simple to use are unmeetable
Then I thought why not schools?
When I was in primary school we all patriotically took what we called tinfoil to school – mostly carefully washed milk bottle tops. Aluminium foil – scarce & expensive & all imported in those days – was not much used for cooking etc
Plastic would be easy to carry to school, even for those who walk
Children would be much better at learning, understanding & applying the mystifying rules about what kind of plastic is required. We are firmly instructed to wash’n’squash & screw the tops back on, though I have read articles which say that the tops then have to be removed & thrown away
And what about all the other types of plastic? They say no food trays – I can understand that for ready meal trays, but what about the sort which come with vegetables or fruit? They say all kinds of bottles are accepted – does that include small pill or vitamin canisters? What about the plastic collars which hold 4-packs of drinks together? And those little sort-of coathangers which are incorporated into packets of this or that to hang on display?
The more I think about it, the more I think children should make themselves useful in this way
