SIR,
Amid growing confusion over Monmouthshire County Council's introduction of single-use plastic sacks to replace the popular kerbside sorted scheme, new concerns are being raised about the twin-sack system.
Material recycling is generally understood to mean producing a new supply of that same material. For example, this happens when junk mail and old newspapers are used to make more newspaper; when old brown glass is used to make new beer bottles; or when clear glass is made into new jam jars.
But it's now emerging that MCC is to collect both colours of co-mingled sack in one compactor truck! Inevitably, the different glass colours will get mixed together, and glass fragments will spoil much of the paper. Hence, the mixed glass ends its life as road aggregate and the contaminated paper ends up being burned, or landfilled.
Rather than "improving Monmouthshire's recycling rates", MCC appears to have introduced a scheme that results in much of our recyclable material not being recycled at all. Had the proper consultations taken place, and the council's flawed waste report of May 2009 been recalled, it's likely that kerbside sorted collections would have been retained and extended across the county.
Steve Rawlings
(Chepstow)