Harrogate Spring Water state loudly on their website: "It is our role to take care of our natural environment."  They then make great play of their plastic bottles being fully recyclable.  And yet, and yet.

The Stray Ferret's article [Harrogate Spring Water plans reignite debate on trees and plastic] shows HSW aim to expand at the expense of 450 trees planted by children some 20 or 25 years ago.  In return, they have arranged to plant some more trees somewhere else.

So: it seems they think that simply by virtue of trees being planted somewhere else that CO2 will be absorbed and stored maximally, instantly, regardless that the new trees will be smaller and younger and take years to establish and grow to the extent of those to be lost.  It is as if there is no difference in the rate CO2 is absorbed and sequestered between old and young trees.

Likewise, it seems they think that "biodiversity" will magically re-materialise in a jiffy.   It is as if there is no difference between an area where lots of trees have just been planted and actual habitats and ecosystems which may have take decades, centuries or even millennia to develop.

It's all the same thing to Harrogate Spring Water: everything is equivalent, or at least as good.  Immediately.  And how can they even be 100% certain that the new sites of tree planting will never be touched again, given that those places are owned by someone other than HSW?

Shame on Harrogate Spring Water.  This is Total Tree Wash.  If they really cared about our "natural environment", then they would stop distracting us from the fact that the world really doesn't need more plastic bottles, recyclable or otherwise.  Even assuming a plastic bottle finds its way to a recycling plant, plastic cannot be recycled endlessly anyway so it pollutes our "natural environment" (e.g. sea; rivers and animals including us) for hundreds of years (and maybe forever) in the end.

Perhaps they should expand by creating teams to educate the public about more sustainable ways of supplying bottled water and/or developing other materials that would carry water without polluting anything.  Or they could simply stop selling bottled water.

Litter bin removal is rubbish

Walking from Harrogate through the Dragon Road car parks towards Bilton on the Nidderdale Greenway, it was disappointing to see five waste bins have now been removed from use.

There is now no general waste bin on the conference centre exhibitors off site Dragon Road car park.

Rubbish is strewn along the Nidderdale Greenway footpath, shopping trolleys over the railway fencing, street lights are out on both the Dragon Road car parks and along the Nidderdale Greenway footpath.

The first bin was located just before the Nidderdale Greenway passes over the railway line, and then another immediately on the other side of the railway line!

Likewise upon reaching the Woodfield Road / Dene Park junction at the Woodfield Park playing fields entrance, there was another pair of bins, one on either side of the Woodfield Road!

What thought has been put into removing existing bins, locating the news one and why the abhorrent OTT  dalek design fabricated from plastic, when the simple metal “stand” seen in use would suffice all round!

North Harrogate Resident