Pitlochry New Year Street Party
Some of our local Climate Cafe group helped out at this year's event as we were glad to support the committee to promote it as a "working towards being plastic free event" through the use of compostable and recyclable cups and containers. McDonalds the butchers served up their soup and the Rotary Club handed out their mulled wine in compostable cups and the local fish and chip shop, "A Plaice to be", used compostable containers for their chips and suppers with all the proceeds going to charity.
Photo from the Daily Record
We helped by stewarding the recycling bins hired from Binn Group for the event and helped anyone who wasn’t sure about where to dispose of their waste cups and containers - it was a great success. Some people were amazing and spot on with using both the composting bins and dry recyclables, others needed some help to dispose of their cups/containers and napkins in the right bins. However there were a few who still saw the bins as general waste bins and just threw their cups etc in irrespective of what the poster on the bin said.
|
So what did we discover? There continue to be problems with how we recycle our waste! Those who are unsure what can be recycled but want to recycle need help to recycle correctly and the information that is available to all of us can be very confusing so having someone close to the bins on the day was great as they only needed to ask us and we kept them right. However normally there is no one at the recycling bins to help those who need support in this.
|
Unfortunately for whatever reason, there are still those who don’t recycle and disregard whether waste could be recycled or not - they just dispose of it in the nearest bin. I now have a better understanding of some of the issues councils have with providing these services to us all and why all our recyclable are not recycled.
However back to the event - there must have been over three thousand local residents and visitors at the New Year Street Party and we managed to divert almost six wheelie bins of food waste and compostables, and four wheelie bins of dry recyclables from landfill. That meant instead of the normal two Council bin skips full of waste gathered at the event, only one was filled this year and the street was tidier and easier to clean up after the event because of these changes. The committee with the help of our local Climate Cafe group intend to improve on what they accomplished this year for 2020’s event. Is that not amazing?
Carol Aitken
Carol Aitken