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20th July 2006

The Environmental Impact Of Our Daily Lives

Following David Cameron’s initiative to ‘Vote blue and go green’ West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine Young Conservatives discussed the issue of how to help improve the environment at their meeting this week.

The biggest issue discussed related to supermarkets and the level of food packaging, not only causing litter, but with oil based packaging causing greater CO2 emissions.  A simple example of change in behaviour over the last 10 years would be the use of plastic milk cartons. In  the past glass milk bottles were much more environmentally friendly because they were washed and simply re-used with minimal ecological impact.  People who visit some of the continental supermarkets this summer should pay attention to the different approach they use to packaging food.  Methods to reduce waste are deployed by charging for packaging and the use of brown paper bags whilst fruit, vegetables and meat are loose rather than surrounded in plastic.

Members believed that food should be kept seasonal and local,  whilst credit should go to establishments who stock locally grown produce.  Foreign imports of food,  in particular Brazilian Beef where cattle ranchers are destroying the Amazon rainforest to flood the UK market with cheap meat of questionable quality, was considered unnecessary and detrimental to the environment..  Cutting down on the ‘Carbon Miles’ of food transport should be a priority when we have the finest locally produced  beef on our doorstep. There is no need for inferior meat and we should support our farmers who do more than anyone else to preserve and maintain the Scottish environment.

At a local level, Aberdeenshire council should do more to widen the recycling on packaging,  polystyrene and plastic packaging which does not seem to be able to be recycled.  As a point of principle we should either create the means to recycle such items or stop using them.

We believe that society cannot continue to consume such vast quantities of finite resources. Instead we should show other countries how the UK and Scotland in particular, could be a world leader in this growth industry by investing in technologies to enable efficient and diverse means of recycling.  Encouraging business to focus their attention on a 21st century issue such as recycling can benefit us all for years to come.