Flexing My Citizen Muscles

Annie Leonard of ‘The Story of Stuff’ and related videos, likes to tell people to act as a citizen rather than a simple consumer. Today I’ve done just that! Despite a sore throat/headache, I somehow got round to doing something I’ve been meaning to do for months. I wrote to my local (Green!) MP asking her if we’ll be getting curbside composting any time soon. I used this site to get her email details and it was so easy. I even got to indulge my rather unusual liking for telling some one to get a bloody move on in a so-civil-it’s-verging-on-pompous way. So any way, here’s what I said:

Dear Caroline Lucas,

First of all I would like to express how happy I am to be living in a Green constituency and how much I admire you as a political figure. I have watched some of your speeches on Youtube and I consider your policies to be greatly inspiring. The fact that Brighton is a Green city was one of the deciding factors that made me choose to come to university here. I started a degree on Environment and Media Studies this term. 

Considering how forward thinking the city generally is, with it’s fantastic bus service and recycling bins throughout the city centre, I was some what surprised to find that I do not have a food waste collection service for my home. My former home of Glastonbury in Somerset had weekly collections for food waste and it was a very successful scheme. 

I was just wondering if any such scheme is in the pipeline for Brighton? Or perhaps it is already being implemented in other parts of the city that I am unaware of? I appreciate your job must be very challenging and you have many issues to attend to – but I do feel quite strongly about this as I am aware that in the UK, 31.7% of household waste is food waste. (Resource Futures, 2009). I’m sure you are more than aware of the critical links surrounding landfill waste, methane gas and climate change… As an environmentally conscious citizen I feel awful throwing waste-food into the dustbin, but as I live in a flat with no garden there are limited opportunities to do much else with it. 

As I mentioned already, I understand you must be incredibly busy, but I would greatly appreciate it if you would take the time to respond and let me know if there is any progress being made on curbside food waste recycling in Brighton. 

Thank you very much for your time. 

Yours sincerely,

Tegan Sonvico Christov

What do you think? I mean, hopefully she’ll answer and if she does I’ll let you know what she says. I can’t believe how little effort that involved… Somehow I was expecting some huge sacrifice of time and energy. I’d recommend using that site if you have any niggling issues you want to raise!

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