WHY CAN’T WE HAVE OUR PLASTIC BOTTLES COLLECTED?

Like other Shrewsbury & Atcham residents I have just received my new bin and boxes for the October fortnightly collection. Of course I am pleased the Conservative leaders of SABC have finally caught up with the rest of Shropshire and provided the means to increase our very poor recycling rate. However, the local Conservative’s failure to join the Shropshire Waste Partnership needlessly delayed us reaching this point.

But the glaring omission in the new system is the doorstep collection of plastic bottles. There isn’t any. Residents are frequently telling me this is the recyclable that they most want collected. They are bulky and awkward to deal with. In a family home, they mount up quickly and are difficult to store for long periods. Residents are fed up with having to take them to the bottle banks, and more unnecessary car journeys are the result. In terms of land fill they take up a lot of room, as we effectively end up paying to bury air. They take for ever to rot down and throwing them away means squandering irreplaceable fossil fuel.Collecting plastic bottles with the other doorstep recyclables would cure all these problems at a stroke. Other local Councils do it-notably Stafford and Tamworth Boroughs, Lichfield, Cannock Chase and Staffordshire Moorlands. These are not rich southern authorities, they are in our next door county.

Just 25 two-litre plastic bottles can be recycled into a fleece jacket. Recycling one plastic bottle saves enough energy to power a 60 watt light bulb for six hours. The benefits, environmental and financial are obvious, why have Shrewsbury and Atcham’s Tories turned them down?

(Letter sent to the Shropshire Star 15 September 2007-date published 22 September 2007)