AS one of the community representatives who took part in the discussions about West Devon Borough Council's new Green Box recycling scheme (Times October 25) I would like to take the opportunity to ask your readers to now grasp the nettle and cut down their consumption of both plastic and its parent oil.
The whole oil industry is both environmentally and politically unsustainable, but, despite our unhealthy dependence on the products we can all 'do our bit': make sure your home is insulated, turn the thermostat down; choose low energy appliances; use the car less, shop locally, if there is an equivalent product not packaged in plastic choose it; if you can do without it, do (especially those carrier bags); the list goes on.
This is all much more difficult than throwing a bottle into a green box and it won't make plastic go away, but in the long run it is more effective than reinforcing plastic culture by transporting plastics miles for recycling.
Mrs Sally Challis
Kinsbourne
Stoke Hill Lane
Crapstone
IT was immensely depressing to learn from your October 25 issue that West Devon Borough Council is going to stop collecting plastics for recycling.
The huge volume of plastic milk bottles bought and emptied every week, and then thrown away after one use will mean acres more of landfill sites are necessary.
Landfill sites are usually in rural places, and more of them means less countryside. Surely, if it is viable for Plymouth City Council to recycle in the Netherlands, West Devon Borough Council should be able to do the same?
How long will it take the council to 'look at' the idea of plastic bottle banks? Surely this is, in global terms, a fairly simple concept?
Glass bottle banks, can banks and textile banks are readily used by the public. Why shouldn't plastic bottle banks be equally well used?
Judith Davies
43 Parkwood Road
Tavistock