News about Britain
December 2002 Each month, the background to a story about Britain.
Read the story with the help of the glossary. Look at three related
stories from around the UK. Then do two exercises - speaking and writing.
Story summary
A
survey which involved 1,000 street interviews across England shows
different attitudes to recycling in the North and the South. The survey
comes after a recent government report showed that recycling rates
have increased only slightly over the last eight years.
North
'rubbish' at Recycling
The North-South divide has been split open again - this time
by a survey into recycling.
A report by the environmentalists behind the Keep Britain
Tidy campaign says people in the North West and Yorkshire are the
worst at recycling.
The "greenest" are well-off home-owning couples
in their 40s and 50s, mostly living in the South West, South East
and London.
The survey was carried out by charity Environmental Campaigns (ENCAMS)
to find out why England is lagging so far behind its European
counterparts on recycling.
The biggest incentive for people to recycle was the fear that a
landfill site could be opened up on their doorstep or that
the government would start charging them for the amount of
rubbish they binned, the survey found.
Those who admitted to doing absolutely nothing included those who
do not read newspapers and believe the only people who do recycle
are "hippies, loonies and anoraks".
ENCAMS marketing director Sue Nelson said: "Recycling has an
image problem and this is something organisations, pressure
groups and councils have to think about.
"From the language we use to the campaigns we run and the publicity
events we stage, we have to consider how that comes across.
"The only way to reduce the rubbish we create is to include
everyone and we'll never do that unless we make environmentalism
more about the mainstream than the extreme."
Scotland:
Eco Schools
The Royal School of Dunkeld in Scotland and Banareng Primary School
in South Africa have formed a link under the Eco Schools programme.
Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell visited the school when he
attended the Earth Summit in Johannesburg.
Wales:
War on Waste
A "war on waste" has been declared by Merthyr Council with
the launch of a new kerbside recycling scheme.
Northern
Ireland: Climb every ....refrigerator
Northern Ireland faced a refrigerator mountain at the start of 2002
as
thousands of fridges and freezers started to pile up in recycling
points as a new European directive banning the destruction of fridges
containing CFCs came into force.
Exercise
1: Speaking
Read the 3 stories above about Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Then imagine that you have a budget to run a campaign to persuade
people in the north of England to recycle their household rubbish.
You have to give a presentation lasting just one minute.
Prepare what you want to say, then click on the clock.
You will see how long you have left - and every ten seconds you'll
see some helpful prompts to assist you:
Exercise
2: Writing
The streets where you live are very dirty. You want to complain
to your local councillor. Complete the following letter - we've
helped you a little bit.
