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Camden News - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 26 June 2008

Green boxes ‘not eco-friendly’

AN investigation into the environmental impact of Camden’s recycling strategy has found that sorting paper from glass and plastic in residents’ mixed green boxes has a massive carbon footprint.
The council’s own environmental audit found encouraging residents to mix all their recycling together had increased participation and cut road journeys, but that sorting it out at the other end used more fossil fuels than the whole process of collection and delivery.
The independent investigators’ report, which took a year to compile, prompted the council’s “eco-champion”, Councillor Alexis Rowell, to challenge the Town Hall to scrap the mixed collections and ask residents to sort out their own recycling.
Cllr Rowell, a Liberal Democrat, said “doing nothing is not an option,” and challenged environment chief Cllr Mike Greene at last Wednesday’s full council meeting to address the issues.
Cllr Greene said there were “a number of issues that we need to consider” in balancing “the targets we are committed to and the carbon consequences.”
In May a New Journal investigation revealed how all of residents’ paper, glass and plastic is shipped to India and the Far East after recycling, despite criticisms of the practice by leading Lib Dem councillors when they were on the opposition benches two years ago.

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