Glass recycling is a climate change nonsense

Camden’s glass recycling has become a climate change nonsense because bottle bank glass is now being mixed up rather than kept separated. As a result it's turned into aggregate for roads, which produces more carbon dioxide than recycling glass into bottles or making glass from raw materials.

If we want to do the worst possible thing for the environment with our glass recycling, then what we’re doing right now is that thing.

Camden collects glass in two ways - via kerbside mixed recycling boxes and via bottle banks. Glass is collected in doorstep recycling boxes which gets mixed up with other recycling in the back of a Veolia waste truck. The government calls it commingling – I call it commangling. Huge amounts of money and energy are spent trying to separate glass from paper unsuccessfully at the Greenwich Materials Reprocessing Facility (see photo). The paper ends up too contaminated with glass shards for UK paper makers to use. The glass ends up too fragmented and colour-mixed to be able to turn into bottles so it gets trucked to Yorkshire and turned into aggregate for roads.

Until recently bottle bank glass was sent to bottle makers in the UK and France. I was always careful to put my glass in the bottle banks because I knew I was doing the right thing to do in terms of the environment. Then one day London Waste (the waste disposal joint venture between the north London boroughs and waste company SITA) decided to replace separated glass transfer facilities at their Hornsey St depot in Islington with mixed glass ones. They didn’t tell Camden. They just did it. And so now virtually all of our glass is turned into aggregate rather than bottles. There is technology for separating different coloured bottles, but it doesn’t work if the glass is smashed up, which ours definitely is by the time it gets to the reprocessor.

I tabled a question about this at the North London Waste Authority meeting on 12 Dec calling for a return to bottle bank glass being separated by colour so that it can be sent to bottle makers. The Chief Executive of London Waste has now assured me that this issue is being looked at. I will continue campaigning for recycling to be first and foremost good for the environment rather than about moving tonnes of recycling from A to B.

A Listening Council

Last night the members of the Executive of Camden Council made a wise decision - they showed they could listen and changed their minds. The issue was Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children, which has to move from the site of the new secondary school in Swiss Cottage. A few weeks ago the Executive announced a "preferred option" - to transfer the pupils of Frank Barnes to Blanche Nevile in Haringey, another deaf school.

At the time they almost certainly genuinely believed that this was likely to be the best option for Frank Barnes. However since then a number of people, myself included, have argued that it was wrong to declare a preferred option without doing a proper feasibility study, and that there may actually be other options - like integration with Primrose Hill School - which would work better. Furthermore, since a working group of the Children, Schools and Families Scrutiny Panel had been formed to look at all options and report back in February, we argued that they should be allowed to carry out their work without the Sword of Damocles of a preferred option hanging over their heads.

To their credit the Executive listened and withdrew the preferred option pending further feasibility studies. There's no shame in that. I for one feel much happier this morning that I am a foot soldier in an administration that is really able to listen. After all, as John Maynard Keynes famously said: "When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do?"

London's 1st Female Councillor was from Belsize

One hundred years ago today Reina Emily Lawrence, a Belsize resident, made history by becoming London’s first female councillor. She was elected on to Hampstead Borough Council on 12 Dec 1907 after winning a by-election with a majority of 319 votes. It was the first year women were allowed to stand as candidates for local councils.

Reina Lawrence was no suffragette - she pledged to work harmoniously with the men on the Council and listed housing, swimming baths and infant mortality at the top of her priorities. She's one of a number of Camden women remembered in a new public exhibition in Holborn Library based on the Council's extensive archives.

Reina came from a comfortable background, her father, John Lawrence, drawing his income from investments. Her mother, Emily, was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica. Reina was born in New York, USA. By the 1881 census, Reina had moved to 37 Belsize Avenue with her parents, eight siblings and six servants. She lived there for most of her life.

Reina studied law, obtaining a LLB (Bachelor of Law) at University College London in 1893. The first woman to graduate in law, Eliza Orme, graduated from the same university just five years earlier.

Opportunities for women to be involved in local government were limited. Reina took an interest in local affairs and from 1905 served on the Hampstead Distress Committee, set up to help the unemployed. This stood her in good stead when in 1907 the Qualification of Women Act enabled women ratepayers to be elected to Borough and County Councils. In December, a by-election was called in Belsize Ward and, supported by the Hampstead Women’s Local Government Association, she put herself forward as a candidate.

In her election address Reina listed her interests as housing, swimming baths and infant mortality and said she intended to work harmoniously with the men on the Council. She was keen to calm any fears about radicalism or extremism and stressed that she was not a Suffragette. One of the people who spoke up in support of her candidature was Eliza Orme. The election turnout was low due to bad weather but Miss Lawrence achieved a large majority and had the distinction of becoming the first woman in England to be elected a borough councillor.

During her time as a councillor, Reina served on the baths, distress, public health and works committees. Unfortunately, her time in local government was brief. She stood for re-election in October 1909, supported by the Hampstead Non-Political and Progressive Association, but lost her seat by just six votes. Of the three lady candidates in Hampstead that year, only one was elected. However, the principle of women councillors had been established and in Reina Lawrence’s own words “no terrible revolution had occurred”.

Belsize Sisters Win Art Competion

As part of the investing in Camden’s homes consultation two sisters from Belsize have been awarded top prize in the Council’s ‘Picture your home’ art competition. Sisters Natasha Petrie-Baker (11) and Alexandra Petrie-Baker (14) were announced joint winners in the age 11-14 category. Samuel Alferink (8) from Holborn won the age 7-10 category.

More than 80 children aged 14 or under, from across Camden, entered the ‘Picture your home’ competition, which was launched to help children and young people to have their say on the Council’s plans to invest in Camden’s homes. Entrants submitted hand-crafted pictures of their home, along with an explanation of what they like best about their home and how their home could be improved.

Camden Council’s Executive Member for Housing, Cllr Chris Naylor, who judged the competition, said: “It has been great to hear the views and opinions of children across Camden as part of our consultation on plans to raise the £242 million needed to invest in our council homes and transform the lives of tens of thousands of our residents.”

Lib Dems Aspire to Higher Standards Shock

There – it’s out in the open. What a weight off our chests. We Liberal Democrats aspire to higher educational standards for our secondary school children than Camden currently provides. (www.thecnj.co.uk/camden/2007/120607/news120607_01.html) Is that a sin? Or even a shock? Isn’t that what we should be aspiring too? How else are we going to get our middle classes to send their children to state schools?

Last week Camden’s primary schools were lauded as second best in the land in terms of contextual value added (which measures how much progress the children have made during their time at the school and takes into account their socio-economic backgrounds). Camden’s state secondary schools are better than those of Islington, Haringey and Brent, but surely that’s nothing to write home about. We have to do better. A lot better.

The Lib Dems are certainly not fans of Tony Blair’s academies, but we need to find a way to raise standards fast and so we’ve decided to use the academy model to bring in UCL, an education provider with a track record of world excellence. I personally hope that the new school will build on UCL’s reputation in terms of climate change research and will put global warming at the heart of the curriculum.

I find it hard to see why aspiring to higher standards than Camden currently achieves is a bad news story.

England's Lane Xmas Tree Lights Switch On

Comedian and local resident Neil Mullarky gets instructions from Cllr Alexis Rowell on what to say to the crowd! I can exclusively reveal that he was telling them that the tree was paid for by England's Lane residents, with all except three contributing. The lights were cabled up by Camden Council's street lighting dept. The decorations were made out of household rubbish (see photos) by pupils from St Paul's Primary, South Hampstead School for Girls and by the St Mary's Youth Group. The Belsize Police Safer Neighbourhoods Team came in on a rest day to control traffic. Mulled wine was provided by the Washington pub. Tesco laid on mince pies and other goodies. And the organisers were me, Serdar Basoglu, manager of the Tesco in England's Lane, and Anna Maynard and Jan Morrison from the Belsize Lib Dems. Thanks everyone. A fantastic community achievement.

Three Soggy Climate Change Bike Protesters

Cllrs Rowell, Abraham and Braithwaite, stalwarts of the Camden Sustainability Task Force, brave the cold and rain to register their protest at Saturday's Climate Change March.