Be Vigilant
I was walking about town the other day, and I saw this sight. Masses and masses of autumn leaves in plastic sacks. This set off alarmbells straight away. The fact that the leaves were packed in heavy duty plastic sacks ,as apposed to compostable sacks, made me realise that the council had no intention of composting these leaves,and were planning to incinerate them instead. .As an organic farmer you can imagine how destressing this was to me
I rang the council (Ealing London) and had it confirmed that the leaves were destined for land fill or incineration.,the reason being that there was too much contaminate in the leaves, in the form of heavy metals.and litter.
This reason was in reality only a half truth in as much as A there wasnt much litter in amongst the leasve.B with very little effort the litter present could have been selected out at point of collection.C any remaining litter,of a noncompostable nature could easly be sifted out at the final stage of composting.
then there was the original question Why were the leaves in plastic.noncompostable bags anyway?Even though the council had decided to land fill with the leaves,compostable bags should have been an essential.the reason being that the councils decision to use heavy duty plastic is extremely distructive and poluting to the land fill process itself,inasmuch as,firstly any material that composts in plastic will be anarobic therefore producing a lot of greenhouse gas methaine. secondly the plastic residues themselves pose a long term toxic legacy in the landfill site.and thirdly should the land fill site catch fire ,a not uncommojnn event,then the plastic will release a cocktail of some of the most poisiones fumes known to man ,including the notorious gas dioxin, in famious for causing cancer birth defect, cronic illness and death. Further more the problems of incinerating plastic, has been well documented too.
Again the considerations about heavy metals in the leaves do not really stand up to close examination. It is my fear that all leaves whether they were collected in the vicinity of heavy traffic or not(example parks or relatively low traffic streets)were going to be treated in exactly the same way. What a waste of clean leaves!
Actually incineration of heavy metal contaminated leaves is also a very ill-considered method of disposal as any heavy metal will be released into the air via vector smoke along with a cocktail of cancer stimulating chemicals. or into ground water via vector ash which would contain the heavy metal in an extremely water soluble form, once again along with the cancer inducing chemicals which are an unavoidable result of burning autumn leaves and especially plastics.
If the leaves were composted, the heavy metals would be released into the soil slowly over a period of up to five years, as apposed to a couple of hours. during this five years the heavy metals would be exposed to continuous moderating enzymatic influence of bacteria and fungus, which would have an extremely moderating effect, making it much less harmful to people plants and animals.
All in all it is clear that the council has adopted a policy wich is corners cutting. Perhaps one could be a bit stronger.neglent? short sighted? polluting? irresponsible?
What do you thing.? anyway thats what our councils are up to thats how they choose to spend our council tax. and apparently its up to us to insure that they step up to the line. Dont let them get away with it. If we are going to protect our planet we really have to stop interfering with the trees natural service of cleaning up .
I would like to see this page turning into a Champaign to (A) move the traffic out of our towns and cities (B) move more trees into our urban spaces(C) compost and use all of next years fallen leaves as soil enhancing plant food.
then there was the original question Why were the leaves in plastic.noncompostable bags anyway?Even though the council had decided to land fill with the leaves,compostable bags should have been an essential.the reason being that the councils decision to use heavy duty plastic is extremely distructive and poluting to the land fill process itself,inasmuch as,firstly any material that composts in plastic will be anarobic therefore producing a lot of greenhouse gas methaine. secondly the plastic residues themselves pose a long term toxic legacy in the landfill site.and thirdly should the land fill site catch fire ,a not uncommojnn event,then the plastic will release a cocktail of some of the most poisiones fumes known to man ,including the notorious gas dioxin, in famious for causing cancer birth defect, cronic illness and death. Further more the problems of incinerating plastic, has been well documented too.
Again the considerations about heavy metals in the leaves do not really stand up to close examination. It is my fear that all leaves whether they were collected in the vicinity of heavy traffic or not(example parks or relatively low traffic streets)were going to be treated in exactly the same way. What a waste of clean leaves!
Actually incineration of heavy metal contaminated leaves is also a very ill-considered method of disposal as any heavy metal will be released into the air via vector smoke along with a cocktail of cancer stimulating chemicals. or into ground water via vector ash which would contain the heavy metal in an extremely water soluble form, once again along with the cancer inducing chemicals which are an unavoidable result of burning autumn leaves and especially plastics.
All in all it is clear that the council has adopted a policy wich is corners cutting. Perhaps one could be a bit stronger.neglent? short sighted? polluting? irresponsible?
What do you thing.? anyway thats what our councils are up to thats how they choose to spend our council tax. and apparently its up to us to insure that they step up to the line. Dont let them get away with it. If we are going to protect our planet we really have to stop interfering with the trees natural service of cleaning up .
I would like to see this page turning into a Champaign to (A) move the traffic out of our towns and cities (B) move more trees into our urban spaces(C) compost and use all of next years fallen leaves as soil enhancing plant food.
