The bins

I had the very pleasant experience of joining many of my fellow Leaders from all over the Country at no 10 Downing Street yesterday. The ability to network with community leaders is always very welcome but doing so with the Prime Minister particularly so, and yes he did speak to me, he does know about Christchurch because he recognised my lapel badge instantly and we had a brief but interesting exchange joined by the leader of EDDC and BBC. However that is not the reason I wanted to blog today. On my way to the station I popped in to the paper shop to get a quality newspaper when I was stopped by a Christchurch resident and local entrepreneur who wanted to congratulate CBC for at last going over to a waste collection system using bins. In a trice the conversation was joined by the shop owner and his team all expressing gratitude for CBC finally doing away with plastic bags. Key points were the hygiene aspects of enclosing food waste, removing the temptation to seagulls to split open the bags at every opportunity. Not lost in the conversation was also the recycling opportunity the new system brings and the importance of separating food waste so that it can be used to produce energy and other bi-products. I thought it interesting that here was a conversation with real Christchurch people praising the direction members of this Council have supported. I boarded my train with a bit of a skip and jump!