Reduce, Re-use and Recycle event report and presentations

26 June 2015

About 25 people shared a very informative and interesting evening with Lorna Walker from SEPA and Rosanna Zweitz from the Highland Council on Monday 8 June at Rosemarkie.

 

Lorna concentrated on the bigger Scottish picture telling us that although still only about 43% of domestic refuse is recycled it is so much better than the 2% of 15 or so ago years ago.  Much is being done at central  Government level to increase salvaging of precious resources , but there is always plenty of room for improvement.

Rosanna told us that in the near future envelopes, drinks cartons, aerosols and yoghurt containers would also be able to be recycled but that we need to wait until it is confirmed for our particular area.  Many plastics are still not able to be recycled so it is up to us all to try to buy products which have no packaging if possible – not easy when supermarkets are our dominant food source.  Our community markets do provide one answer though – keep spreading the word to everyone – they are a great way to shop locally and so much more friendly than a trip to the supermarket.  Over 27% of what goes in our domestic bins is food waste so there’s still much for us all to do to only buy what we need and be imaginative about using up what’s in the fridge.

One local concern is that the new regulation of filling in a form to be able to take a trailer or van load to the Dingwall recycling centre might lead to fly tipping. Roasanna was keen to point out there would be no charge for this service and the forms are easily downloaded from the website or available at the recycling centre, so shouldn’t be an obstacle.

There was a large “swap your stuff” stall and although some people did take away goods there were lots left which will go to the community markets so look out for that item that someone wants to get rid of that’s just perfect for you.

Wendy.

Lorna's and Rosanna's presentations are available to view via Dropbox.  For best view:

On the Dropbox page, if there is a Comments pane on the right, click 'Options / Hide Comments' to remove it
Then set Full Screen view - either
          Toggle Full Screen on and off with key F11
    or   Hover over Powerpoint slide and click the Full Screen Icon, Esc key to turn off.
In Full Screen view, use left and right arrow keys to move between slides.

Click to view the presentations:   Lorna's  (SEPA)     Rosanna's  (Highland Council)

Lorna's Powerpoint file includes the text of her talk, but this does not appear when the file is viewed via the Dropbox link.  To read her text with the slides, click 'Download' on the Dropbox screen and open the Powerpoint file on your computer.