Plastics in the ocean, Sky's Ocean Rescue Campaign

Last week saw Sky launch its campaign to reduce the amount of plastics washing into the oceans of the world. I will not repeat the info that sky has but i have posted the link below.

http://news.sky.com/video/why-should-you-take-part-in-sky-ocean-rescue-10740487

It was not too long ago I was thinking of the plastic bottle as a saviour in the world of litter picking an street cleansing, thy generally don't break up like a glass bottle and are less dangerous to collect etc, but this campaign has made me stop and think. In Tamworth for over a decade now we have collected plastic bottles in blue boxes or bins and sold on this recyclate to be spun and made into the fashionable fleeces worn on a cold day, we did this by the container load and the council generated a nice income. But this is clearly not the whole solution. not every bottle is recycled.

The sky campaign raises some interesting solutions such as bottle return deposits etc and this got me thinking. No one is reinventing the wheel here, there was always a deposit on glass bottles in the past and then in another true sense of recycling for a purpose and not recycling for the sake recycling we used to have glass milk bottles. I believe milk bottles are no longer make?
So following this thought I looked for a milk man in my area, apparently there are some but they come around in diesel powered chassis cabs! hold on what happened to the milk floats of the 1970's powered by batteries, remember the electric milk floats. So we used to have washable sterile reusable bottles moved around under nice clean electric vehicles and now in the 21st century we are producing more plastic in a decade than the whole of the 20th century and running milk floats on fossil fuels.

May be we should go old school and reintroduce reusable bottles and newer high tech batteries.

On a different note my initial reaction was to consider a trip to the beach to do a litter pick of plastic bottles before they drift out fill with water and sink.. . then I stopped and thought hold on all rivers and as in Nemo "all drains lead to the ocean" its our local parks rivers and streams that need cleansing before they end up in the sea.

So to conclude have a look at the Sky campaign lets all support it in any way we can whether in thought or deed,


I did find the below Youtube video interesting, its not going to solve the problem but it gives you something to do.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqGaRqjWICU

Lorries to be banned from London ?

   Ok I may be biased or prejudiced on the matter of heavy goods vehicles but I must share my opinion on this, road safety is a priority and more must be done to protect cyclist on our increasingly busy roads.  I  just feel there needs to be some extra care here to make sure the outcomes are what was intended.

   The figures I have used are from this sky news article, HGVs were involved in 23% of pedestrian fatalities over the last two years and 58% of cyclist deaths, the mayor's office said. Lorries account for just 4% of all miles driven in the capital. These figures are quite horrific, 58% of cyclist deaths within 4% of over all mileage. The figures that are missing are those for incidents involving cyclists, HGV's and other vehicles which do not result in fatalities. One of the tragic elements of this subject if that due to the weight, size and construction of a lorry if there is contact between one and a cyclist the outcomes are some what limited. 

  In London, the UK and in general people do not drive lorries just for fun, they drive them to make money by delivering goods (however that doesn't mean they can't enjoy driving). 

 Obviously there are different sizes of lorry but just to make this point I will assume that the ones in question are a standard artic size with trailer and I am going to avoid other complexities such as fridges, waste management, builders/maintenance etc . All shops, restaurants, cafes offices etc etc need to take deliveries have good collected by vehicle. the capacity of lorries means that a large quantity of goods can be delivered to single or multiple destination with a single limited mileage, limited trips and limited resource in all definitions. If all of these goods were delivered by smaller vehicles there would need to be significantly more vehicles on the streets of London. 
     Many shops use roll on roll off cages for deliveries, a double deck trailer can carry around cages, with a tail lift to lift them in and out of the trailer down to street level, a white panel van, may get 3 cages on and if fitted with a heavy tail lift or ramp this figure may reduce based on gross vehicle weight. SO, if a fleet of vans (sprinters or transits etc) were to replace a double deck articulated lorry with its limited lines of vision the fleet would need 25 vans. That's 25 drivers and 25 times the amount of mileage per lorry removed

     One of the main threads of the argument for banning lorries is the lines of visibility. I am sure that this is an area that can be developed on lorries but there must also be other options such as goods vehicle permitted times, These can be investigated and do not have to follow the traditional methods of night time only deliveries, Or maybe cycle/none HGV routes and none cycle/HGV routes to segregate the different vehicles but facilitating the needs of businesses and workers. 

I just feel more thought needs to go into this before the roads of London are blocked with an invasion of vans making the deliveries of a few lorries and there is even less space for cyclist to travel freely and safely.