Sir, – After the Christmas festivities, I find myself preparing for a trip to the bottle bank to dispose of all the glass that has accumulated. But wait a minute? Why destroy all this beautiful and useful glass? I have a gorgeous cut-glass prosecco bottle, a blue gin bottle, some shapely red wine bottles and slim and elegant green bottles from white wine. Those hexagonal chutney jars are really lovely and the Follain marmalade jar with its flowery lid is so pretty. I even have some dinky bottles which held vanilla and almond essence. The jar which held the candle is decorated in a delicate oriental pattern. I hesitate to smash these things of beauty. There was a time when I could have returned them and earned back my deposit. Why not bring back this circular system of reusing instead of discarding?
In the slogan “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”, the order of the words is important. Our first way of lowering our environmental impact is to reduce consumption, the second is to reuse what we have, and only then, when these two options have been exhausted, to think about recycling. – Yours, etc,
ANN DONNELLY,
Castleknock,
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Dublin 15.