Readers' letters: Charities can do more to cut plastic waste

Plastic bags never fully decompose. As a manmade substance there are no naturally occurring bacteria to break it down so it is still around in thousands of years as a thin plastic soup flowing in and out of every living cell.

Reader Neil Barber is exasperated by the weekly unwanted delivery of charity bags

Is it only me, therefore, who is beyond exasperated at the weekly unwanted delivery and immediate binning of charity bags?

I have looked up and down on “collection day” and there are maybe one or two filled bags on the pavement, which means that every week many hundreds are sent to landfill from our street alone.

I was in the front garden when the delivery boy showed up this week. I gave him back the bag, asked him to stop and explained to him that we were an environmentally conscious household, we had no children, we seldom bought clothes and that the only plastic bags we ever handled were the ones he posted through our letterbox.

His solution: “Put a big sign on your door saying No Charity Bags!” I explained that then we would have an ugly big sign on our door simply to police against his trespassing and unwelcome posting. He shrugged and jogged off.

Don’t get me wrong, I would have important causes such as Children’s Hospices across Scotland and Cancer Care and Research properly funded through progressive taxation and not by begging for second hand clothes.

But it reflects badly on the charities involved that they make householders complicit weekly in this gross environmental pollution.

Neil Barber, Edinburgh.

Spend SfP funds on refuse worker wages

Our bin men are council workers whose work is essential.

Meanwhile others in the council find money for their frankly deranged studding of our streets with rubber and plastic hazards to cyclists like myself, in the name of ’Spaces for People’

What are the odds that if they put it to a vote by us all, we’d say put the ’Spaces for People’ budget into the bin mens’ pay packets - and vote them a special bonus to gather up all the rubber and plastic nonsense?

Michael Upton, Edinburgh.

Truss’s big boost for independence

Although Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are not too popular north of the Border, Ms Truss, having ingratiated herself with the traditional hard right of the Tory Party, looks likely to be our new Prime Minister.

Once again, most of us will just have to thole a Prime Minister not of our choosing. Having suggested Nicola Sturgeon is an 'attention seeker who should be ignored’ and British workers are ‘lazy', Ms Truss's offensive remarks can only boost support for independence, I imagine.

If her childish remarks resonate with voters who are wavering towards voting Yes to independence after voting No, she could inadvertently, be playing a big part in the break-up of the Union.

If her remarks about Scotland's First Minister and workers weren't offensive enough for some, it has come to light that when Ms Truss was deputy director of the right-wing Reform think tank, she co-authored a document that called for doctors' pay to be cut, patients to be charged for appointments, child benefit to be scrapped and the winter fuel allowance to be stopped.

If we really care about our NHS and care sector, they are far too precious to be left in the hands of Liz Truss and her right-wing Tory chums.

To be fair to Ms Truss, from day one of her Tory leadership bid she has made it perfectly clear that she resents progressive taxation, which is essential in a decent society.

Jack Fraser, Musselburgh.

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