Plastic People

The marathon article about Real Mallorca the other day had a number of gaps. Deliberately, as it was long enough as it was. I am indebted though to a letter-writer to "The Bulletin" for raising an issue that I didn't pursue in that earlier article - that of the environmental aspect of Paul Davidson's proposed plastics recycling factory, the one that appears to play such an important part in the strategy for Real Mallorca.

The letter refers to the "outrage" of the recycling plant. Maybe it is, but maybe there is another side to the story. There is much science surrounding plastics recycling, some of it aimed at reducing or eliminating the environmental and health damage that can be a by-product of the recycling process. For example, there is one process being developed which seeks to remove the impurities both of the recycled product and also of the CO2 that is used in the process; the CO2 itself would be recycled, leading to an "environmentally benign procedure"*.

Nevertheless, there is an environmental question mark over the recycling process, and one does have to wonder if the Davidson plan has fully taken account of the environmental lobby in Mallorca; much of it is of an extreme environmental Carlist** nature. Have Mr. Davidson and his associates actually run the whole thing by any authority or is it, as it were, a pipe dream, given Mr. Davidson's success with pipes and tubing? The letter-writer also refers to the logistical sense of locating a plant in Mallorca; it's a fair point. To make economic sense, a plant would require the importing of much waste. Yet, not only is Mallorca typically an exporter of much of its waste for recycling, one of the business problems for plastic waste recyclers in other countries has been the actual shortage of waste. This stems, in large part, to a lack of consumer education, and nowhere is more lacking in this regard than Mallorca, and one imagines also on the mainland.

Despite the strength of the environmental voice on the island, the consumer-side mechanics of recycling are not well developed. Just to take plastics. Here you don't get numbers to denote different types of plastic. The local household here places its waste in different communal containers - general and garden; glass; paper; plastic and tin cans. Once, when the plastics truck appeared, I asked the chap if I could chuck in the legs of a broken plastic garden table. No problem. And yet, the chemical make-up of those legs is almost certainly not of a recyclable nature or wanted by a recycler. The US numbering system informs the consumer as to the type of plastic and its consequent recyclability. The easiest and most recyclable plastic products are things such as bottles for water and drinks, shampoos, detergents and those made from polystyrene. Others, e.g. shower curtains, film (as in cling film for example), supermarket bags and Tupperware (and garden tables), are, for differing reasons, not welcomed by recyclers, simply because of the low possibility of actually recycling the stuff. The best way of getting rid of them, other than chucking them in with the other plastics or general waste, and hoping no one notices, is to return them to the manufacturer who then has the headache as to what to do with them.

In Germany the system is altogether more rigorous, one of the strictest you can find. It was Germany, surprise, surprise, that originated the household waste Gestapo that comes and roots around in your containers to check that the waste is in order. The vast municipal dumps in Germany are like open-cast factories of control and organisation. First, they check the contents of your car boot and you have to pay for certain things. Second, you are instructed as to which enormous skip you must go to for which item of waste. Third, there are camp commandants barking out instructions to anyone foolish enough to try and deposit the wrong item in the wrong skip. But at least you know what to do. Every last conceivable product is allocated its own waste treatment.

By contrast, here, as with many other things Spanish, they make a lot of the recycling deal and then can't really be arsed to see it through. Take that exporting of Mallorca's waste. You may recall me mentioning before that during August a vast mountain of waste had grown next to Alcúdia's commercial port. It was there because the recycling firms on the mainland were on holiday. It was perhaps rather indicative of an apparent indifference. There are dumps here, but where is another matter. Whether many use them I very much doubt. One of the first "cultural shocks" on coming to Mallorca was with the disposal of garden waste. I had gathered together several sacks of the stuff, then thought where's the tip. It was only then that I realised you chucked it in with the general household stuff. Great. Much has been made of the increases in "rubbish tax" as a means of paying for more recycle processing, but quite what happens with the stuff that is collected I am not sure. For instance, I don't know if any plastics are currently being recycled on the island. I presume not as, of the stuff that grew into that mountain in Alcúdia, much of it comprised plastic bottles, the main constituent of the current consumer plastic recycling effort.

As a consequence of a not wholly efficient method of collection, lack of labelling, education and enforcement as well as apathy and laziness (you want to see the amount of plastic and glass that gets tossed into the general container), much that might otherwise be ready for recycling ends up as landfill. I have said before that the system here is excellent because you can just chuck any old thing in the rubbish, but I do get pangs of guilt. And all of these things contribute to costs of sorting and to the shortage of certain items, as with plastics for recycling. Which brings us back to the Davidson recycling plan. A lack of "raw material" is one thing, but one must ask if the exporting of plastics to the mainland is because of the absence of a recycling plant or because the island does not want it in its own backyard. Has the Davidson plan got some in-principle agreement or does it lack legs - plastic or otherwise?

* The quoted words come from an article on the emagazine.com website, a good resource for recycling and other environmental issues. I acknowledge this site and the sciencedaily site as sources of some information in the above - http://www.emagazine.com and http://www.sciencedaily.com.

** Carlism was a movement against liberalism in nineteenth-century Spain and which promoted a pure and traditional Catholic state.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Depeche Mode - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzHMhQOU1fE. Today's title - by one of the great weird American bands; maternal.

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