LOCAL FOOD

Photo: Bottle bank in Buncrana

There is a lot to be said for locally produced goods. Take hay fever cures for example. One of the most effective preventions to this irritation is to have a regular supply of local honey to eat. The fact that bees have collected the pollen from flowers around Inishowen helps the body build up immunity to the allergy in the same way that vaccinations work. Eating locally grown vegetables grown in soil made from composting of home waste is also great for the environment (food not having to travel vast distances) as well as for us -healthy soil means healthy food! The idea is simple and places like the country markets keep the tradition of local trading alive and well. The introduction of products from around the world has largely done away with neighbourhood trading though as we tend to all shop in the supermarkets for the bargains, regardless of where they have been produced. In the same way we buy clothes. Most of the companies here have either closed down or moved to a country with cheaper labour costs. We import an immense amount of goods every year and although Ireland does have a small export trade, a vast amount of our export goods is actually the waste from our everyday lives as consumers. Ireland as a nation exports nearly 1 million tonnes of waste a year. A staggering 800,000 tonnes of this “Green Waste” goes to China, where labour and environmental laws are not as stringent as most European countries.

It is a real eye opener for people who take their cans, bottles and newspapers to the recycling centres around Inishowen to learn that their empty dog food tin ends up in a field in China. The worrying thing about this problem is that the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t know where all the rubbish goes either, as they can’t keep track of the stuff. Waste is sold on the open market in exactly the same way that any other product is. If someone is out to make a quick Euro, then, just like in any other industry, silly things can happen. One waste broker was quoted to say “Sending the waste over to the other side of the world is favourable to burying it at home.” Comments such as these tend to leave a bitter taste in the mouths of environmentalists as it just moves the problem to the other side of the world and uses a lot of fossil fuel in the process.

Workers in China are reportedly sorting and burning toxic substances out in the open air with no protective clothing. Workers are underpaid and operating in very dangerous conditions. Precious metals such as lead and mercury, which is known as “e-waste” are melted down on open fires and the toxins run directly into the rivers. Chinese environmental authorities have found that more than 70% of the water in five of their seven major river systems is unsuitable for human contact. Plastics are big business as well. More than 3000 tonnes of agricultural film and even more food containers are melted down for recycling, which usually means that the melted down plastic has to be moved from China back to Europe for re processing into other products. The fuel to do this far outweighs the benefits to the environment.

Some of the statistics are enough to make you just give up the recycling habit. There is hope though as companies get more competent. In some countries the collection of waste is in place long before the actual recycling is established. A city in England asked everyone to separate all of the plastic, paper and tins for the bin men to collect. For years the public watched as a lorry collected the different products and threw them all into the same container for disposal in landfills. The council eventually established a network of recycling companies, but it took time. Now markets are in place the products are collected separately, (hopefully it isn’t all going to China). Ireland is just beginning to get to grips with the idea of selling waste as a product. Hopefully the recycling companies will be ethical and sell it closer to home to be processed. We might see recycling companies set up closer to home if they can compete with manufacturing costs. In the meantime we can carry on buying less packaging and composting our green waste in the back garden.