SIR,
Monmouthshire County Council is currently running a "purple bag" trial in some parts of the County and householders are asked to put all of their recyclable waste into one purple bag instead of separating it out as in the black box scheme.
While this may make life easier for the householder and give the impression that the Council is increasing its recycling rates, anyone who saw the "Tonight" program on 8th September will know that the co-mingling of recycling is a retrograde step and potentially very damaging to the environment.
When recycling is separated at source, as with the black box scheme, almost all of it is recycled by British reprocessing plants.
However, when recycling is mixed together it becomes contaminated and up to a third of it ends up in landfill. Paper, for example, cannot be recycled in this country if it is contaminated with broken glass.
To add to the problem, most Councils hand their recycling over to a registered waste company and it has recently emerged that many of these companies ship their poorly sorted or unsorted waste abroad for recycling.
Most of it ends up in poor countries where labour is cheap. In India, contractors are employing "dollar-a-day" labour to sift through our waste for anything useable or recyclable and the rest is being dumped.
In a stinking pit close to an Indian national park, waste that could only have originated in Britain can be found in abundance. There are at least ten other similar sites throughout India.
This is nothing less that fly tipping on a global scale and it would be scandalous if the residents of Monmouthshire were prepared to turn a blind eye to such behaviour just because it might make their lives marginally easier.
There is, so far, no evidence that Monmouth's co-mingled waste is exported to India or anywhere else. However, it is unclear as to what happens to it after it has been delivered to the sorting depot in Cardiff.
On the other hand, recycling collected by the black box people is sent to well known British reprocessing plants, and the whole process is completely transparent.
Finally, a recent correspondent extolling the virtues of the purple bag scheme signed him/herself "Concerned Resident".
I am at a loss as to understand why this person was not prepared to use their proper name. It leads me to speculate that he/she may have something to gain by persuading residents to endorse the purple bag scheme.
Ann Were
(Drybridge Street
Monmouth)