IT WAS cheering to read in my emails yesterday morning that folk are already planning ‘burn your facemask’ parties. With restrictions promised to come to an end on June 21, this has to be the day the country should send these ghastly face nappies, the most visible sign of public submission, up in smoke.
But just when you think the fun’s going to start, up pop the waste experts to say on no account must we burn them.
‘Our best advice,’ says Mark from a company called Divert, ‘is to use reusable masks and to ensure you’re following WHO guidelines on safe removal and disposal.’
Well, I enjoy a good bonfire. And I say they should look to Sweden on this as well as lockdown. That sensible country, as I understand it, burns as much garbage as it recycles, and what’s more turns it into energy.
I don’t see why we can’t follow suit. Starting with a big national incineration party on June 21.
In 2014 Ted Michaels, the president of the Energy Recovery Council, a trade group for the ‘waste-to-energy’ industry, said: ‘There are folks that love to hate waste energy . . . They’ll perpetuate the notion that it is dirty, or otherwise bad for the environment.’ They still do. Mr Michaels proposed Sweden then as a counterexample of an ‘absurdly progressive community’ that has reconciled with incinerators.
It’s another thing we would do well to follow the Swedish model on.
Feel free to discuss this or anything else on your mind.
