Action Briefing Jun 2003 - Jul 2003
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

Recycling goes up . . . in smoke

Last April (that’s 13 months ago!) Birmingham Friends of the Earth staged an action where we presented Cllr Albert Bore with over 200 “messages in bottles” from Birmingham residents calling for improved recycling facilities in Birmingham and specifically for plastics recycling facilities. Over a year on, we decided to revisit the recycling issue and find out what the council has done in response to our public appeal. The simple answer - nothing.

Cllr Bore never responded to our petition even after several follow-up letters. Meanwhile the national Government target for recycling (30% of domestic waste by the year 2010) is creeping up on us, and Birmingham has a way to go from its current 8.5% (an unsubstantiatedestimate from unknown council sources).

The main problem for Birmingham appears to be simple lack of political will. A recent press article criticising the council’s recycling record, and the fact that it had failed to respond to the petition, quoted an unnamed 'Council spokeswoman': “Burning plastic bottles makes economic and environmental sense as the plastic adds to the calorific value of the waste incinerated and this adds to the electricity produced and sold through the national grid. Transporting very light bottles up the motorway would produce emissions.”

Birmingham Friends of the Earth considers that the “economic sense” (i.e. profit to the company that owns half of Tyseley Incinerator) in burning plastic and emitting poisonous gases into areas where people live is short-sighted and exposes local people to unnecessary and serious risk.

Red herring
The issue of transportation of the (empty, compacted) bottles is a red herring to say the least when we take into account the fact that Birmingham is 20 miles from Stratford, where a large plastics recycling plant currently imports millions of tonnes of bottles from Belgium and Holland because local demand is insufficient. The Council is also very quiet on the issue of emissions from road transport when we question them on their transport policy. And what about the question of waste minimisation? No mention of course of the pollution caused by making plastic bottles in the first place. Plus, we import all the plastic bottles by road when they’re full, heavy, and take up much more space...You get the picture. Oh, and you can bet, those of you who took the trouble to send us a message in a bottle, that they burnt it. La Lutta Continua...

Jenny Thatcher