Recycle Christmas Cards to help the Woodland Trust plant a forest

Until the 31st January 2009, if you take your old Christmas cards to one of the following stores, they will be collected as part of the Woodland Trust Christmas Card Recycling Scheme to plant trees and create the largest new native forest in England - HEARTWOOD FOREST. The stores taking part are: WHSmith UK mainland high street stores Tesco All supermarkets including selected Express stores Marks and Spencer all stores including selected Simply Food stores TK Maxx

Pilot schemes to go ahead using microchips in wheelie bins

The government today insisted that pilot schemes to test bin taxes using wheelie bins with microchips will go ahead despite a decision to scrap them by the first council to try the scheme. (link via guardian.co.uk) I don't get it. How can the government decide to go ahead with a scheme after a test scheme failed by a council in Norfolk, England? Why bother with testing the scheme if the government is going to ignore the results? I think everyone had predicted a huge increase in flytipping (which there was) and I'm sure most people aren't surprised to hear about "a combination of electrical, data, mechanical and hydraulic faults." Weighing every wheelie bin and recording the results sounds way too fiddly and unreliable for it to ever be efficient and reliable. And this was only one area, so imagine the problems on a country-wide scale! The other factor which I think will become more and more apparent if this scheme goes ahead, will be the problem with dishonest people who surreptitiously dump their rubbish in someone elses bin. (And locks on the wheelie bins would never work - unless you were always available to unlock it just before the bin is emptied!) I think the whole scheme is fraught with problems. Recycling to reduce waste is to be encouraged but I don't agree with a scheme to weigh our rubbish bins. What do you think of the chip-in-bin system to record the weight of your bin? Do you recycle? If not, would this system encourage you to recycle?

Compost clothing

The BBC reports : Fashion students in the Scottish Borders have designed a range of clothes to be worn in the garden and then thrown on a compost heap. I love it! Bio-degradable and recycled gardening clothes. How cool is that?!