Arran’s bottle banks threatened?

Press releases from North Ayrshire Council are as rare as hen’s teeth, but one arrived last week, announcing that Waste Awareness Officers had visited Arran ‘to advise residents of the improvements to their blue bin kerbside recycling service.’

What exactly are these improvements? The blue bin, it seems, will now take more or less everything, including plastic bags, supermarket food trays, yoghurt pots, small plastic toys, empty plant pots – and glass. Yes, the bottles and jars that used to go into the bottle bank are now supposed to go in your blue bin.

People saw at once that a single blue bin was not going to be big enough. They also wanted to know what is in store for the existing bottle banks. Are they to be withdrawn? NAC was coy (and wordy) on both subjects. ‘Residents can make a request for an additional blue bin but are asked to try using their existing blue bin first.’ And, more ominously – ‘Residents were advised that a review of bottle banks will take place once the scheme has been fully implemented during the next 12 months and residents are using their blue bins to recycle glass.’

Questions bristle. What guarantee do we have that bottles in a mixed bin will be separated and recycled? Will British Glass take cullet that is contaminated with general waste? What about the safety of workers on a picking belt who have to handle broken bottles and jars – if indeed they do? The suspicion must be that the entire mingled waste mass will be packed for export, and this would be of great concern to many of us.

Arran’s bottle banks were set up by a small local group who had been told by NAC that glass recycling was not viable for Arran’s small community. The group proved that it could be done, and ran it until the bottle banks came within NAC’s general waste disposal agenda. There is now cause to wonder whether the intention is to withdraw this service in the name of economy. But if there are no public bottle banks, where will the great numbers of tourists dispose of bottles and jars? Leave them on the beaches to be broken by the tide and endanger people’s feet? Economy is not the only thing that matters.

The rare press release says, ‘More information can also be found at www.north-ayrshire.gov.uk.’ If anyone finds anything useful, do let us know.