Bring back the bottle banks

That seems to be the message from the British Glass Manufacturers' Confederation on June 16th. If we put our bottles in the recycling box for commingled processing, very little of the glass is used to manufacture new bottles, it ends up in the foundations for roads instead. Their press release says:

“The result is that the cullet is not only being colour mixed, it is also being compacted and mixed with the other materials, possibly making the end product less suitable for new containers. The cullet from such activities is not only potentially unsuitable for container manufacture but could also affect fibre applications. The result is it is only suitable for low grade applications such as aggregate from which little or no carbon benefit is derived.”

The British Glass Manufacturers have been to visit the North London Waste Authority and explain this. So says Councillor George Allan, who has just stepped down from the NLWA Committee. He says that the glass in the recycling bins also contaminates the paper making that fairly low value as well.

The EC recycling targets have been a good thing in that recycling rates have been forced up. However, in carbon terms, the old system of sorting everything into different bins ourselves had a lot going for it.

The looming UK energy gap in 2015

M.P.s Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry were both at the bike breakfast this morning at the Angel. Both confirmed that they had asked for amendments for the climate change bill to include international aviation and shipping and an 80% (rather than 60%) reduction target by 2050.

But the topic I wanted to discuss with Jeremy was the looming energy gap. It looks as if the government is going to encourage/permit all the ageing nuclear power stations to be replaced. And more significantly, the government has indicated that it wants to significantly increase the amount of nuclear power. As vice chair of CND, Jeremy opposes nuclear power. In any event, little of this will be in place by 2015.

Jeremy thinks that the government has made a prejudiced argument in favour of nuclear power. But I pointed out that the government's view is shared by many others (such as the Royal Society). Jeremy thought that opposition in Parliament to nuclear power has been muted but it would get much stronger going forwards.

I argued that I would prefer to use nuclear power and have a local (UK) nuclear waste problem than to use biofuels, still seen as a solution by many politicians, which takes food from the mouths of the poorest people in the world.

Jeremy thinks that we can manage with far less energy (which I agreed with) and he thought that energy would be rationed by price in 2015. I argued that no government should allow this to happen. He suggested that customers would be given a discount for the first N units and then customers would pay a premium for additional units. I pointed out that that would be unfair to large families. He argues that allocation could be based on the number of individuals per household. I said this was pretty similar to introducing personal carbon allowances which Emily had said a few months ago, was unpopular with many MPs.

Jeremy also mentioned that he'd considered putting solar PV on his roof. But it was too expensive. I pointed out that some individuals had had solar PV installed on their roof funded entirely by the Low Carbon Buildings Programme and Islington Council. He said 'good on the council'.