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Send in waste views

SWINDON Council is consulting on a new Waste Strategy. Regrettably, the key proposal is to abandon recycling plastic packaging. In future, SBC plans to feed all plastic waste into Swindon’s Solid Recovered Fuel plant along with the residual waste (non-recyclable stuff) in your wheelie bin.

This is a really bad idea.

One Cabinet member has called this plan “a different recycling route”. It is no such thing. The SRF is exported to be burnt in industries such as cement making. Burning plastic releases dangerous toxins as well as CO2. How would we feel if it was burnt in Swindon? Burning waste should be a last resort, reserved for the residual waste in your bin. This is even spelt out in the current Government’s 2018 Environment Plan, “A Greener Future”, along with the need to reduce the amount of plastic going into SRF plants like Swindon’s.

Now that China has stopped importing waste, the UK recycling industry is reviving. For instance, waste giant Biffa are planning a major investment in plastic recycling, on top of the 780 million plastic milk bottles they already recycle every year.

Around 80% of plastic waste is recyclable and, as Cllr Renard has reminded us, we are not meeting our recycling targets. So how does it make sense to stop recycling a whole waste stream?

Swindon residents have until October 18 to send in our views (see sustainableswindon.co.uk). Please tell SBC to keep recycling plastic waste.

Jane Milner-Barry, Labour Councillor for Old Town and East Wichel

Time to walk away

IS it me? Or have I got it all wrong?

I always believed that a Conservative government knew about business and the art of negotiation.

How wrong could I be. They appear to know absolutely nothing about either of these subjects

The first thing they should have done after Article 50 was implemented was to tell the EU: “That’s it. Our association with the EU is finished. You have made it exceptionally hard for the British.

“So as a result of our referendum we want nothing more to do with you.”

Let them get on with it from here on in. We pay them nothing. No £40 billion as severance. We don’t have to pay it. So we just walk away now as we should have done ages ago.

The EU have tried their hardest to humiliate the British at every step of the way. Enough is enough.

I won’t be part of Mrs May’s cap-in-hand efforts to get a “Deal”.

Let’s just call it a day and walk away from it once and for all.

Most of the brave boys and girls of ours who died to set Europe free must be turning in their graves at the way the French and Belgians along with the Dutch, Danes and Italians, Greeks and all the newcomers in Eastern Europe are treating us. If it wasn’t for us and the Americans most of Europe today would be speaking German.

Tell `em to stick it. Europe has cost us too much over the years.

David Collins, Blake Crescent, Swindon