Scotland Recycling and Vegetable Production

Well, it seems I may need to eat some crow and post some updates to my comments regarding recycling and food production in Scotland. 

I was contacted by a work colleague from a company I used to work at, who is a proud Scott and had read my entry.  He was not in agreement regarding my comments on both the lack of recycling in Scotland and the lack of fresh-locally-grown vegetables.  This interaction encouraged me to do a little research.

I have contacted each of the establishments I stayed at and have asked for the status of any recycling programs they may have.  I will post the replies as received.  In the meantime, I did some Google searching regarding recycling in Scotland and found some great info. Programs do exist, but they seem to be limited in regions served and frequency.   

A great site to start at is http://www.recycleforscotland.com/recycle.asp.  I was unable to get a match for any of the locations we stayed at (may not have picked the right regions), but it seems the program is centred around major urban regions only.  For many of the listed areas, there does seem to be great service including a ‘Blue Box’ program similar to our own.  The site claims 93% of households in Scotland have access to kerbside recycling facilities and the rest have “Recycling Centres & Points” to take your recycled products to.

Another great site was http://www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/ which seems to be more of an educational and support organization and not into the day to day activities of recycling.  It appears that through education and lobbying, this organization is creating a greater awareness and need to recycle and reduce.  It had great information on the need to recycle and how recycling impacts our planet and material stream.

I then Goggled “Recycling Centres & Points” for each of the locations we stayed at and found that some had a Centre close enough to be practical.  For instance, The Isle of Mull had a centre in the very town we stayed in: Tobermory.  Dornie had a point at their town centre.  Some spots like the one in Balquhidder, did not appear to have any reasonable options.

So I am a bit perplexed, both my wife and I are very used to recycling at home and out and about in our daily lives.  Even our ‘remote’ vacations in Tofino involve separating all recycling into provided bins and taking the ‘loot’ with us to drop off at the local centre (about 20 minutes away from Tofino near Long Beach) when we are heading back to the Mainland.  So we are very used to looking for the bins, yet in all of the places we stayed at, there was no obvious facility to separate out the recyclables from the main garbage stream.  I would imagine that the Blue Box programs are fairly successful where available, after all, how much effort is involved with throwing goods into a blue box compared to a garbage can.  But if a resident has to store up the recycling materials and bring them to a location that may be 30 minutes or more away, I can understand (unfortunately) the hesitance many would have in participating in such a program.

Does this mean that even though the facilities may be available, they are not used by a large percentage of the population?  Do only ‘urban’ residents participate?  I do not have the answers.  If you are reading this blog and live in Scotland, I would love to hear from you.

As a side note – I also checked on Chicago and confirmed it does NOT have an active recycle program.  The cost of the blue box program was turned down years ago and has to date never been re-initiated.

So, now to the topic of Scottish produce.  Again, I turned to Google.  The first site I visited (http://www.scotland.org), advised that Scotland grows 2,400 tonnes of raspberries, 4,600 tonnes of strawberries,  and over a million tonnes of potatoes per year. 900 million eggs are produced annually, 1,300 million litres of milk and there are more than two dozen cheese-makers across Scotland, ranging from the industrial cheddar creameries to much smaller-scale cheese producers (I wonder if this is a misprint as we probably have 2 dozen cheese producers in our local Gulf Islands). The site went on to state "However, beef is now the single most important sector of Scottish agriculture, worth around £400 million a year: more than fruit, dairy and poultry combined!" It also stated "The jewel in Scotland’s crown is her fish with nearly 200 shellfish farming companies. Salmon farming is the most important economic development in the Highlands and Islands over the past 30 years, and the retail sales value of Scottish salmon is around £300 million per annum. Scotland is the world’s third largest producer of Atlantic salmon and enjoys a reputation for quality fresh and added-value products such as smoked salmon."

http://www.nfus.org.uk indicated that most of the soft fruit farming is in Tayside, Angus, and similar fertile areas near Dundee (an area we did not visit but is near where my colleague grew up and forms the basis for his points of view).

I then visited http://forsythfreshproduce.co.uk/index/fresh-produce-seasonal-report and read where all the salad ingredients come from basically the UK and Holland.  Most of the vegetables were UK/France/Spain/Holland.  These results are for June which arguably is some of the best growing weather for crops like salad greens.  This information aligns with the information we were given by the ‘locals’ on our trip. “Veggies and Salad greens are not grown locally and imports are often expensive”.  Additional sites indicated limited cauliflower, broccoli, and leek production was also present in Scotland.  It was interesting to see that the Beef industry was so big in Scotland.  We saw our first cow when leaving Scotland near the Inverness airport, up until that time we only saw sheep.

http://eatscotland.visitscotland.com/food-drink/in-season/ was an excellent site to show what is potentially available fresh and local per season.

So again, I am left a bit perplexed.  If the growing conditions support fresh vegetable production and they are available in the marketplace, Why are they not served more often?   

One of the locations we stayed at (Monachyle Mhor) had its own garden, and we did have some lovely cooked greens and carrots while staying there, but our first real salad did not occur until the end of our journey at The Old Inn in Gairlock.  Our stays in Edinburgh, Tobermory, Dornie, and Nairn had considerably less choice for products that grew above the ground and left us wanting more.   

Why don’t more residents have their own mini-gardens to bolster their vegetable availability?  There certainly was the room for them in most locations we visited.  Are there difficulties I am not aware of?  Or is this just a menu preference of many of the Scottish peoples?  If so – why?  Where has the habit of game and root vegetable dominance originated?  All topics for someone else’s blog I am afraid but I would love to hear from any of you that may have some insight.

Our general experience was a starting lack of fresh vegetables being made available to us during our journey.  This is the experience that initiated the original blog entry.  The thought process then evolved into our society’s general reliance on transporting fruits and vegetables and other produce clear around the world, regardless of seasons.  This is a global phenomenon and certainly is much worse at my local supermarket than anything I encountered in the UK.   

It is I believe not a sustainable practice.  It is one I hope to curb in my personal life once I finish my upcoming build and would be able to set up a garden in our back yard.  I hope to provide a majority of our vegetable needs for at least three seasons of the year.  Will I still buy Japanese mandarins every Christmas, California cucumbers in the winter, and Mexican fruit in the early spring?  Probably, but in the mean time, I am also trying to find many more local sources of produce that is grown or raised in BC to limit the energy it takes to get food to my table.