From The Daily Telegraph, 17 August 2009
By Richard Savill
A state school in Waterlooville, Hampshire, has been accused of potentially creating a “back-door selection” system by introducing a compulsory ‘eco-friendly’ uniform costing about £100 ($165 USD)
Oaklands Roman Catholic School in Waterlooville has introduced the uniform made from recycled bottles which can only be bought from the school or from the Schoolwear Shop in nearby Havant.
Other schools also have some degree of exclusivity, where logoed polo shirts or jumpers can only be bought from the school or one shop.
MPs have raised concerns that such expensive uniforms could deter poorer families from sending children to their chosen school…
Parents have pointed out that supermarkets like Tesco can supply entire uniforms for only £3.50 (about $5.75 USD).
Full Story here
Selecting waste data in different years as well!
Cool. Is that common practice on this blog?
Any more political garbage?
REPLY: You’ve said that before, so your welcome has been withdrawn, since your purpose is denigration, not discussion. If you want to complain about this story, I suggest you complain to the Telegraph, in your own country, which is the source of this story excerpted here. – A
Faith schools: I also do not believe in faith schools. However, it you want to spend money on sending your kids to one, go ahead. However, if your faith school indoctrinates your children against a free and open society then I have reservations about allowing such a school to sit within our border.
Uniforms: If a district enforces uniforms, then at least one school and all charter schools should be allowed to have dress codes without uniforms. I witnessed a very fashion talented middle school girl drop out of school over her use of very cute hats to go with her very cute outfits. Hats were not allowed and she stuck to her guns about the hats. So she walked out. She has now permanently left school and is not doing well. She could have taken the fashion industry by storm.
Purchasing and costs: The school should provide uniforms at cost. Retailers can sell them at profit if they wish. The uniform should support your own country’s industry and should be sweat-shop free from the thread, to the fabric, to the finished garment. I don’t care what they are made of. The ecology footprint is the same regardless of fabric content.
Whatever happened to the generation that protested against human suffering? Are they dead and gone like Bobby and Martin? What is this gnashing of the teeth over recycled pop bottles???????
Alexej Buergin (07:57:00) : Try more modern data:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/waste/kf/wrkf15.htm
25.3 million tonnes of household waste was collected in England in 2007/08; 34.5% of this waste was collected for recycling or composting. The amount of household waste not re-used, recycled or composted was 16.6 million tonnes, a decrease of 7.0 per cent from 2006/07. This equates to 324kg per person of residual household waste and shows progress towards the 2010 target, in the Waste Strategy 2007, of reducing this amount to 15.8 million tonnes.
The waste pie:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/waste/kf/wrkf05.htm
[snip wayyy ot]
“bill (09:15:08) :
Alexej Buergin (07:57:00) : Try more modern data:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/waste/kf/wrkf15.htm”
I tried and did not find anything about recycled plastic bottles. They seem to be included in “co-mingled”. So the UK does not separate plastic from other stuff, yet.
The fact that England made such good progress lately merely indicates that they have just started.
To “The Ville”, your welcome mat has been withdrawn since with your recent posts (which remain unpublished) you are now exhibiting classic troll behavior. Trolls are discouraged on WUWT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28internet%29
As I said, if you have issue with the article, take it up with the Telegraph as I’ve excerpted it without adding any wording of my own. If they see fit to print a retraction, I’ll print it here also.
Can you believe the nonsense commented on this article. The issue that the Daily Telegraph was taking up, and it has been in the media for some time (very samll coverage it has to be said) is that schools can effectively select students by charging high amounts for uniforms. It has nothing to do with recucled bottle tops. Other schools do exactly the same thing, the uniform costs just as much but it is not made from recucled material. So if you are going to post on this at least get the facts straight.
To the moron who mentions ‘Made from crude oil, – nonsense, where does polyester come from anyway? See the comment above which clearly points this out.
Just amazing – give people the opportunity to moan and they will, at any old tat that can be had, doesn’t matter whether its true or not, or whether its been put into context.
Green = expensive. I don’t know whether it is or isn’t, but at least compare apples with apples. Ie don’t compare cheap clothing made in an Asian sweatshop with quality item made in the UK where cost of labour is probably 10 times as much. This appears to be a site where idiots can let off a good rant about a storm in a tea cup. They know nothing about the tea cup, but can tell you the precise temperature of the tea. But is it green tea or darjeeling?
Alexej Buergin (10:46:00) :
I tried and did not find anything about recycled plastic bottles. They seem to be included in “co-mingled”. So the UK does not separate plastic from other stuff, yet.
Plastic is recycled in most areas. Even tetrapac is recycled. plastic forms 0.6% of total. there does not seem to be recent bottle recycling amount.
So are you suggesting that the UK imports bottles to recycle into clothes?
The article is typical quiet period stuff that trash like the telegraph and mail love to print.
Recycle and be poorer!. Anything that you recycle (use once, twice, etc) you stop buying a new item.
Journalists articles should be recycled also, so cost will lower for the media:more recycling, les journalists…(Ha!…they didn´t thought it this way)
Recycling is anti-capitalist, recycling is communist!
“bill:So are you suggesting that the UK imports bottles to recycle into clothes?”
No. Do not import used plastic bottles. Do not recycle them into clothes.
But: Put plastic bottles in one bin, glass into another, metals into a third, green stuff into a forth, and New Labour into a fifth. Replace Gordon Brown with Chubby Brown.
£100? Are they serious? My school uniform 26 years ago cost more than that at the time, let alone the cost of inflation. Roman Catholic school blazers alone cost about £65 in 1980’s money. I have no idea what that relates to in today’s money.
Kids today, they don’t know their born…
Sorry, folks, this really doesn’t have much to do with recycling – as others have said, fleece is often made from recycled plastic and the school seems to be aiming for a higher-quality, better produced (in many ways) garment than the cheap tat that the supermarkets are loss-leading.
The Telegraph article is really about the politics of selection in state schools, and in particular ‘faith’ schools. This is a long story which I won’t elucidate here, but really the ‘eco’ angle is just a cheap side-swipe by the Telegraph to keep their readers on-side, because your typical Telegraph reader probably quite likes the idea of selection (grammar schools) and making little Johnny and Joanna wear a smart uniform (probably with a bit of caning thrown in for good measure 🙂
Of greater concern to the school is that the cheap manufacturing of school uniform in the developing world comes at the price of long hours and appalling conditions for those involved.
Well perhaps the workers in these third world swet shops should have a say. It might seem like slave labour to some in the west, but the choice for these people is food or NO food, any work is better than NO work and it will improve over time just as it did in the UK for the children working from the age of 5 down the coal mines.
I have noticed the term, “sweatshop,” being thrown about quite freely in this discussion. Because a company chooses to purchase clothing manufactured in low-wage countries does not justify describing those clothes as having been made in a “sweatshop.” Now, if you want to practice protectionism, fine, you reap what you sow (and I don’t mean that necessarily in a negative way), but leave the demagoguery to the politicians.
They talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk.
BoS
This appears to be a site where idiots can let off a good rant about a storm in a tea cup.
Pamela Gray
Faith schools: I also do not believe in faith schools. However, it you want to spend money on sending your kids to one, go ahead. However, if your faith school indoctrinates your children against a free and open society then I have reservations about allowing such a school to sit within our border.
Unfortunately, there is some truth in what Bos says. Exhibit One: the rant from Pamela Gray. I wonder who Ms Gray thinks should have the greater say over how their children are educated: their parents or the State? Or perhaps Ms Gray thinks that she should decide how everybody’s children should be educated? Please stick to climate issues in future, Pamela, and leave out your prejudices on non-climate issues.
Like some other contributors I did wonder what this article had to do with climate change. Yes, Anthony, it’s your site and you can do with it what you want but I think that it would have been better to omit this item. I just cannot see the point its inclusion is trying to make, especially when you read the comments from several UK contributors.
Now here is a real story about climate change and education in the UK. The first point to notice is that education in England and Scotland (and NOW, thanks to Mr McAskill, you’ve all heard about Scotland, haven’t you?) are administered totally separately – like education in Texas and California. Here in Scotland we have an organisation called Learning Teaching Scotland. Its purpose is to provide resources for use in schools. It has now produced resources for teaching about climate change. Now you would think that when something is tackled in an educational institution it might be tackled in a balanced way. (Well, alright, you’re not that daft.) You know, putting both sides of the issue. Well LTS’s materials on climate change start off with this statement:
“There is now an overwhelming scientific consensus that the earth is warming, and that the degree of recent changes can be explained only by the effect of human activities. In Scotland there is evidence of changes with relative sea level rise affecting parts of the coast, maximum and minimum peak river flows increasing, average air and sea surface temperatures increasing, and species distributions changing.”
The following item appears below a photograph of polar bears;
“Climate change is real and the time to act is now.
Our world is warming faster than at any time in the last 10,000 years and human activity is to blame. In Scotland, 2006 was the warmest year on record. Every day millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases are emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere, driving global warming.
The actions that you take have an impact. You can make a difference.
What happens in the next few years is crucial. If we keep polluting and acting like nothing is wrong then dangerous climate change is inevitable. If we take action to tackle global warming, lower our carbon footprint, and tell people about climate change and what they can do to fight it, then we can reduce our impact on Planet Earth.”
And then there comes the ‘balance’:
“Although there is an unprecedented consensus among world scientists that global warming is caused by human activity, not all scientists and commentators agree. Media reports often highlight climate change myths and and TV documentaries and books have questioned the influence of humans on the climate
There are a few scientists and commentators who don’t agree with the scientific evidence that human activity is changing the Earth’s climate.”
Then there’s this cracker:
“It is important to consider all points of view, have informed debate and examine the arguments that climate sceptics make.”
And here’s their idea of informed debate:
“The level of consensus regarding climate change within the scientific community is unprecedented. The latest assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the work of over 2,500 scientists, from 130 countries, with over 800 peer reviewers.
They then go on to quote various bodies which support the theory of AGW.”
So this is now the official idea of ‘informed debate’ in Scotland. Let the AGW brigade give you both sides!
For anybody wanting to see more of this stuff then go to:
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/sustainabledevelopment/climatechange/index.asp
woodfortrees (Paul Clark) (02:19:53) :
It’s amazing what some people can read between the lines. I must learn how to do that some time. Maybe my shoulder chip can become as self evident.
Thanks for pointing out this article, Anthony. It’s certainly not world-shaking that a school would require “green” uniforms, but it is another example of an amusing modern trend.
It’s also interesting how various commenters have interpreted the article according to their own backgrounds. It reminds me of the story about the blind men and the elephant.
” Bill P (13:36:15) :
A lot of green” – It’s nit-picking, I suppose, but it’s green only if payment is made in 100 pound notes.
http://www.moneymatterstome.co.uk/Images/Euro_notesCoins.jpg
Apparently, every denomination of Euro has its own color.”
Some more nit-picking: A UK-“pound” £ is not the same thing as an Euro (there’s the bloody-independent-minded Brit for you). But of course you are right: It is very practical to be able to distinguish money by color and size; and the only reason to use a 1-$ bill instead of a coin is for tips in another country.