Another person's treasure - reduce, re-use, recycle

When I was a little girl, one of my best toys ever was a red scooter, which I bought at a jumble sale.

I was reminded of this scooter on Monday afternoon because I went to the United Downs household recycling centre. Cars queued up for people to leave their discarded household items while two employees asked us survey questions and several others helped organise who parked and left their items where.

There are lots of ways to recycle useable items - car boot sales, charity shops, e-bay, small ads, jumble and garage sales - all in use in Cornwall.

Do SITA really need to do a survey to establish that Truro, as the fourth largest residential settlement in Cornwall, also needs its own household recycling centre? Otherwise its a ten mile round trip to United Downs.

Did I hear at some stage that SITA's contract with Cornwall Council gives the Company exclusive rights to the household waste it collects in Cornwall? As the cars queued, I was paused by a roadsign saying '60 per cent recycled'. As the SITA newsletters say, that is probably a bigger percentage than before. But it is 60 per cent of items brought to this household recycling point. None of the black bag waste gets recycled. Do they calculate what proportion of all household waste gets recycled through kerbside recycling collections as well as household amenity sites? And if so, please will they add that to the information in their newsletters.

Like many people, two of the reasons why I consistently oppose a centralised incinerator are that it would reduce recycling and increase the local miles that Cornwall's black bag waste travels.

And I agree with Councillor Andrew Wallis that creating opportunities for people to re-use items locally that have been taken by others to the household amenity sites makes environmental and social sense.

I can still remember waiting for that second hand red scooter to be reduced from 15 shillings to seven shillings and sixpence (37.5 pence) at the end of the jumble sale, so that I could buy it with my pocket money, and the many hours I spent playing on it.