Thames Valley (Berkshire & Oxfordshire) Paranormal Group

There has been lots of news of late of how long it takes for carrier bags made from plastic to break down, and the damage it is causing to dolphins, birds and wildlife.
Do you think we should adopt paper carrier bags that can be recycled? Well known stores are charging for bags now, but is this really adequate. Do we need all this packaging on our food and goods?

Should it be compulsory for all homes to have recycle wheelie bins, for glass, plastic, tins and paper? Berkshire in many areas have no such facilities and have one of the worst rubbish issues in the country.

Is it our right to want these things from the people who run our county? Is it right for us to want to protect the world we live in to secure it for later generations?

Do we need all these plastic bags? if its an issue which obviously by news standards it is, why is no one doing something about it? it takes one shop to start a chain reaction. who will be first? Maybe the government could supply each house with hessian bags, free! to stop anyone having an excuse not to use them.

Could we all not have these pull along granny trolleys instead and vamp them up abit? There are many solutions, and who wants plastic anyway, they build up in draws and break anyway when filled with a loaf of bread!

Bah don't get me started on wasteful packaging and carrier bags. You go into say Toys-r-Us or any other supermarket and 99.95% of the shop is filled with stuff in huge amounts of plastic packaging that takes ages to open, is a total waste as half the products are opened anyway or have a "touch here to try" which every scruffy sticky finger in the shop has poked and pushed in.

Food's only packaged because it comes from so far away and would otherwise be gone off before it got even to the shop. Support your local market and providers.

Who needs a carrier bag to take something that is already packaged just to the car????? I go to some shops and have to specifically ask not for it to be put in a bag. Fish and chips, who needs a carrier bag for that for example?

Bah bah bah

Well I am very pleased to tell you, here in the Vale we have the second highest success rate for recycling for a council.

One week it is glass, cans & paper, the next week it is cardboard and plastics, they also take all our garden waste, and our other refuse is collected weekly.

You are very lucky, Berkshire is rubbish when it comes to subjects such as these. yes we have banks for recycling dotted about but i feel these bins need to be more accessible, as they are in places where only a car can be used. So we maybe doing some good, especially if people are religious about recyling, but the downside we are still causing problems with environment to get to the recycling bin. More people in Berkshire would i feel recyle more if we had such as systems as yours.

We also have bottle/clothing/paper banks dotted around, and they usually have some in the car parks of the supermarkets too, then we have the refuse/recycling council sites where you can go dump stuff yourself, but as you say, if you not got a car, it's difficult, thank goodness they collected from our door.

I think it has come to a crucial point for all of us ,the planet and our animals. This warning has been around for a few years now it's a shame that some people don't take it seriously or still think it has nothing to do with us. Every little makes a big difference

We can't make a sufficient change to the environment, the damage has already been done. By the time we acknowledged what needed to be done, the down pour of the environment's cogs had already been turning.

Whatever changes we make now or in the past 7 yrs, will only have an effect to slow things down.

It is sad to say but 60% of all recyclable rubish wich doesnt have a high enough value for recycling is not as published recycled because the government doesnt see it as cost effective so it is instead taken to an incinerator such as the one at grimsby to keep the figures looking good when they trully are not that impressive on how much is recycled

Tescos do greenpoints to encourage people to bring their own bags... They also have a big carrier bag recylcing bin in the entrance to Reading tescos... Is it wrong to grab a handful of bags from it on the way in just to get the clubcard points???

We could do with something like that at Asda Andy. I bought numerous recycled bags but whenever I go shopping I never remember them grrrr. I have trouble remembering what I done the day before let alone remembering to take bags. If there was a similar scheme at Asda this would be so much greener xx