Swaffham: Please reycyle. I missed it
DID you miss it? I did. It seems that it was a national "Recycling Week" at the end of June.
Not that I was alerted to it by the Norfolk Waste Partnership's free magazine that dropped through my door last week. NWP is a joint effort by all the councils in Norfolk to promote recycling and the reduction of waste.
Even if it had been mentioned in the magazine, I guess most people just chucked it in the bin as another piece of junk mail, hopefully to be recycled. Own goal, or what?
If you did read it, then you may have been surprised to find that the Ashill Recycling Centre (that's "The Dump" to you and me!) will accept light bulbs and fluorescent tubes for recycling, as do all 19 of the county council's other recycling centres.
It's not just standard bulbs and tubes – they also accept halogen and the new-style low-energy bulbs. I've said before, I remain deeply cynical about low-energy bulbs. They may last 10 times as long, but you have to turn them on so much earlier to get them to full brightness. Should you break one, the official advice from the Department of the Environment says the room needs to be ventilated and vacated for at least 15 minutes to allow the toxic mercury vapours to disperse.
You must not then use a vacuum cleaner to clear up the debris, and care should be taken not to inhale the dust. Instead you need to use rubber gloves and place the broken bulb in a sealed plastic bag – which should then be taken to the local council for disposal. And just how much carbon footprint will that leave behind by the time all of us have driven to Ashill? Energy saving? I think not!
The magazine also told me to expect to meet "Spike" some time soon in Swaffham. He's big! He's fluffy and a little bit spiky, apparently.
He's Breckland Council's new cartoon character dedicated to spreading the word about the danger of litter to wildlife and, of course, he's into recycling as well. The picture in the magazine suggests he's a cuddlified (great new word?) hedgehog. I just wonder how much the consultants were paid to come up with that idea.
While I'm talking rubbish, why is it that we have a green bin for rubbish and black bins for recycling when most other councils use the green bin for recycling? That seems the right way round to me.
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Weather for King's Lynn
Monday 28 May 2012
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