Gina Davidson: Cut down waste to shrink waists

Published on Thursday 26 February 2009 09:15

IT is perhaps the most brilliant piece of straightforward talking that's come out of a council chamber in quite some time – but, have no fear, the latest local authority gem didn't originate in Edinburgh.

Rather, it took a shoot-from-the-hip, tell-it-like-it-is cooncillor fae Fife to spell out the basic facts of reducing waste – even if it did land him up to his own waist in a pool of stinking reaction from the electorate.

Fife Council is looking at reducing the general household waste pick-up from fortnightly collections to monthly, with a recommendation that food waste should go into the brown garden bin.

And if the pilot scheme is successful, other councils may well follow suit.

But this practical move toward forcing people to ensure they are recycling all they can has sparked outrage, especially among larger (numerically speaking but, let's face it, also in more weighty terms) households, who claim that after two weeks their bins are overflowing and it would all present a serious health risk with rats running amok in the streets of Dunfermline.

So what did Councillor Ross Vettraino, vice-chair of Fife's environmental committee, say? Did he pander to such personal hygiene concerns?

No, he did not. He just told them to "eat less".

Of course, what he also meant was buy less so that they don't have fridges overflowing with food that will ultimately be chucked out. But have you ever heard anything so practical?

Not only would it reduce the amount of waste in the grey bins it would also reduce the waistlines of Fifers, which can't be a bad thing given that schoolchildren in the Kingdom have the highest level of obesity in Scotland.

Indeed, a quarter of primary one pupils, according to figures for 2006, were overweight.

Of course, Fife is not alone in its problems in dealing with increasing loads of food waste – and increasing waistlines.

In the Lothians, obesity costs the NHS 60,000 a day in treatment and it's estimated that 150,000 adults in the region are now classed as "clinically obese" and the council is doing its level best to get people to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Across Scotland, more than 889 million worth of food is wasted each year. That's an average of 410 per household.

If we stopped chucking stuff in the bin, it would prevent the equivalent of 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide being generated each year in Scotland – the same as taking one in every four cars off the road.

According to the campaign Waste Aware Scotland, more than a third of the food we buy is thrown directly in the bin even when more than half of it could still have been eaten. All of which adds up to around 587,000 tonnes of food waste being thrown out by Scottish households each year.

The figures make pretty stark reading, and call for stark answers, such as that of Cllr Vettraino.

Mind you, given that so many people are now making sure every penny counts – and that doesn't include shopping at Tesco – his words could not be more timely.

Buy less, eat less, waste less. Not only will our bank balances be better off, so will our waistlines, our health and, ultimately, our environment.

We're all worm food

IN a similar vein, East Lothian Council has come up with a new way of getting rid of us once we've shuffled off our mortal coils (no doubt due to fat-related diseases) which can also help the environment.

Bodies could be frozen, then shattered into dust, before the powder remains are put into a bio-degradable coffins.

Within six months, the whole lot has turned into mulch and can then be used to make the worms fat.

Ultimately, we're all just food waste.

Banking on Hester

BANKERS are not on anyone's Christmas card list at the moment, but at least RBS seems to have found someone who just might be able to get us to change our minds in its new boss, Stephen Hester.

Not only is he apparently doing good things in getting the institution back on its feet, he's also realised just how badly it needs to repair its reputation locally.

As a result, he has scrapped the conditions which gave bank staff special access to a 1.6m hospital scanner RBS donated to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary last year.

It was perhaps the worst PR exercise the bank went through – before the credit crunch – creating unnecessary ill-feeling towards it given that it seemed to create a two-tier health service for cancer and heart patients.

Now all he needs to do is remove the ostentatious bling that hangs from the bridge outside the Gogarburn headquarters and the bank might finally be back on the right track.