Representing Cambodia ...

The assignment just undertaken in the form of a UN debate was an interesting one, and one that I did enjoy. I learnt a lot about group work, and how that government policies are available for public reading (if they exist!). The country that me and Steve were set to work with was Cambodia. Researching information about sustainable development strategies for a majority country was relatively difficult and a hard task. This surprised especially due to the millennium development goals, so before I just assumed every country were pulling out every stop to be sustainable, but in the research this was not the case.

Out of all 14 countries – there were so many varied approaches in this race to achieve the ultimate aim of living sustainably. This was fantastic and great to know, even though many are unsuccessful. It was interesting to hear, from other majority world countries, who on the day to day you would not hear about their sustainable development strategies.

Steve and I’s presentation went fairly well, even though it was slightly unstructured. I was expecting to rehearse previously with Steve, but this wasn’t the case, as he didn’t turn up. This meant that I was in fits or nerves before hand, but when in the UN debate, I was fine. We worked well together, and we created a well organised handout – although we could have put more detail on it – but at the time, we thought that wouldn’t be necessary.

If I were to do this exercise again, I would defiantly rehearse the speech, provide more detail on the handout, maybe dress up and take the role play in to its true meaning! I did enjoy this assignment even though I did stress myself out – but I am good and pleased with our result.
I learnt about the ways that each country in the world, try to tackle the same issue differently, some better than others, but also how much the importance of sustainability differs. I think it helped me to see sustainability on a more national level, that the more developing countries should be bothered too.

I learnt, not to leave things to the last minute, in terms of our rehearsal. The team work between us was well distributed and it was also a challenge to work with someone off campus, as they aren’t just there in the next flat if you need them!

All in all, it was worthwhile and rewarding.

References

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cb.html

Break - cycle : Does recycling really take place?

Well once again, I have woken up, eaten my breakfast, thrown away the plastic jam containers, thrown away the empty washing up liquid bottle, thrown away the orange juice carton, and this is all before I have got dressed. I make my lunch, there is more plastic rubbish, empty Frubes tubes, a can of sweetcorn chucked away. Do I need to say anymore to emphasis the point?! On a typical day, I fall in to a habit of calling what is no use to me anymore, rubbish, but is it rubbish?

Many county councils across the UK have started to take a tough approach on this idea that you can’t just dump what you don’t need anymore, because this style of living is NOT sustainable. The area of landfill is decreasing every year as we; human beings are the ones who are filling it up with junk.

In the borough of Northamptonshire, the Northamptonshire Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy has been released, in 5years (2001/02 to 2006/07) the household recycling rate for the whole of Northampton has more than doubled, from the projected figures expected to be finalised soon. This shows a huge increase in people recycling waste and would suggest a huge improvement in the areas of sustainability.

When looking at the finer picture some areas of the borough, have increased hugely with household recycling rates 4% to a mighty 43.3% (KBC) and others only improved from 44% to 47% which is still above the UK average but has DDC found a limit to recycling?

These rates vary in accordance to district for what I assume are many reasons. Each district in Northamptonshire hold their own policies and approach to environmental issues especially recycling and household waste. With differing strategies out to encourage households to recycle, some strategies are bound to work more positively than others. But also some districts i.e. DDC have already reached a rate of nearly 47% of household waste being recycled, where as some districts are still working to achieve such rates. The issue that is raised from this though is, the percentage of household recycling may be increasing, but the amount of waste is ALSO increasing therefore, probably the same amount of recycling is occurring just in larger quantities.

If efforts are made to help households to produce less waste in the first place, then this is also likely to have positive implications for the environment, as well as reducing the cost of waste management.
(page 18 of the NJMWMS Strategy Report)

Some districts use a ‘fine’ system as a deterrent so that households WILL recycle. The variations in collections, not just the timing but what each borough collects will also impact the rates of household recycling rates. If accessibility to recycling is not made easy enough for people then the likely hood is – they will not do it, and this will add to the varying rates as well as the successfulness of the borough.

When observing the summary of annual waste generation per household in 2006/07, I was horrified that roughly, 2 people in Northamptonshire each year will create 1 tonne of waste – that is crazy!! The main way I see fit to reduce this huge waste generation is to cut done primarily on things like – food packaging etc. But also, to try and re-use so many things, i.e. food waste going in to a compost heap, assuring that all foil, plastics, paper is recycled, glass is taken to be recycled and that only rubbish is chucked out.

In Northamptonshire, there could be better incentives to re-cycle, so maybe if you re-cycle; you get so much off a bus fair, which again is encouraging the use of public transport. This would be better than not to have any incentive and in the current economic climate every penny helps!

Even as a university student, if I was shown the real life weight of a tonne in rubbish or otherwise, I would probably be twice as horrified, to when I read the statistics of how much household waste is created per year. In this, a better education of what we should recycle and why, may bring a better reaction through shock. It was only a few weeks ago that I moved in to my flat, but we have in our kitchen, a bin, a green bin for paper and cardboard, a blue bin for tins and plastic and then we also have a red box for glass. This really helps to separate rubbish and recycling and for a flat that does not have ground floor access, makes it a lot easier to manage and clear, even though some students are still struggling with what should go where.

I agree with the disappearance of carrier bags at supermarkets, because it does encourage people to think about re-using bags as well as other items hopefully too.

The one thing I think that not only our university would benefit from, but more communities would, is local compost heaps. I know they may encourage little rodents but, they would cut down on some waste, and as Tesco would say ‘every little helps’.








REFERENCE

Northamptonshire Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy
http://www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/Environment/Waste/strategy.htm
(pp.17-19 Tables 3 - 5)