Oil and hearty
Keith Floyd follows the sun to explore the benefits of the Med diet.
Feeling blue: good for you?
What's the point of misery? Why do we have to feel messed up? Why do we have emotions?
As a popular actress and comedian, Helen Lederer has very little time to take recycling seriously. Like most of us she tends to open up a packet and throw it away with the rest of the rubbish. So Ever Wondered sent her out to discover what actually happens to the rubbish we so readily throw away
Helen: Can you tell me a little bit about the future of waste.
Robin Murray, Economist: Well we’ve come to a crossroads. 100 years ago we used to just throw the stuff out into the street. Next the London County Council told us we’ve got to have a dustbin and it’s going to be collected once a week.
Now we can’t do that any more, because of the landfill problems, so there are two directions open to us. One way is to go down the incineration and either burn the rubbish or to take the compost and work out the chemicals in a very high tech way. But the problem with that, is the stuff that comes out of the chimneys turn into ash and so on. The other route is here, which is the recycling route. If you took this newspaper for example, instead of it going into an incinerator it would go down to Kent, to the biggest recycling newsprint plant in Britain and would come back as the Sun probably about 19 days later. The same would be true of the bottles.
Here we have the first mobile recycling cart in the world. This little cart runs on electricity, 50p a day, and it goes on the pavement. So it is very environmentally friendly, this is the future, the new rag and bone man of the 21st century.
The people who work with them have got to be trained, they have to have all the knowledge about the materials, they have to be able to talk and get the householders into recycling. If you do it like this you’re going to be able to recycle 80-90% of your waste which is what they’re doing in California and in Australia.
Helen: Do you think it’s going to catch on?
Robin Murray: Well it’s caught on here, because 85% of the people on this council estate are actually doing this every month.
Helen: Well it’s been a revelation being so close to rubbish, I’ve learnt about the processing, the science, and the politics, I’ve even read what the council have sent me and I know what day they come now. It’s a start isn’t it?
If you would like to find out more about recycling then here are a few suggestions.
Books You Can Read:
Britain Today: Environment, John Baines, Hodder Wayland; ISBN: 0750215372
Recycled Papers: The Essential Guide, Claudia G.Thompson, Cit Press; ISBN: 0262200899
Recycling and the Politics of Urban Waste, Matthew lardy, Earthscan; ISBN: 1853831689
Waste and Recycling, Craig Donnellan, Independence Educational Publishers; ISBN: 1861681283
Links You Can Surf:
Waste information
Environmental Yellow Pages for Great Britain
Also on this site : You can join Terry Hall as he tests his expectations of city life versus country life
If you think you might be interested in studying more about these subjects, find out what the Open University has to offer.
The BBC and the Open University are not responsible for the content of external websites.
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Content last updated: 15/03/2005
