Gone with the wind

I headed to Blaydon on Saturday morning to meet up with Cllr Christine McHatton and Mark Groves from the local action group that tackles the on-going issue of the problem of landfill sites in the area. There has been a huge amount of windblown rubbish flying around local communities recently and people are quite rightly fed up with the problem. We had a look at 2 sites - Path Head and Blaydon Quarry.







On Gateshead Council we will shortly be having a scrutiny committee meeting with the Environment Agency to discuss the landfill issues. With more and more rubbish being diverted into recycling streams or converted to electricity, the question has to be asked, isn't it time to phase out landfill completely?

Lib Dems in Blaydon constituency have been fighting landfill for over 20 years. I remember helping Ione Rippeth, who retired 3 years ago as councillor for Ryton, to campaign against landfill back in the early 1990s. We simply cannot keep dumping waste into holes in the ground. We have to look at ways of converting waste into something useful. We can each play a role in reducing waste as well. We have successfully cut our waste to a low level in my house. Our general waste wheelie bin is put out for collection only once every one to two months. Our recycling wheelie bin is put out for collection once a month at most. We have decided not to take part in the garden waste collection scheme because all our garden waste will be composted. If we each do our bit, we can cut down on the damage we each do to the environment.