United Nations blog

Me and my partner Katy represented South Africa in the united nations conference. We found some useful information on the internet about sustainable development in South Africa. I found out that they were doing quite a lot to help towards sustainable development, and this surprised me a little as I thought they would rather spend money on just generally trying to develop as a county, and not bother so much about being sustainable. For example on the website http://www.southafrica.info/about/sustainable/ I found out that they were spending money on replacing street lights bulbs with energy efficient ones. Then listening to the other countries presentations I discovered that almost every country was doing quite a lot towards sustainable development. But during Americas presentation they said they would use the UN’s money to improve there military. I do no agree with this as America already has the best military in the world and it doesn’t need improving. They also said that they would use the money on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I feel that enough money has already been spent on the war and trying to sort out the issues in both of the countries. I think its time they just left the countries alone and let them solve there own problems.

I think our presentation went well, I got straight to the point, and highlighted key point to read out, instead of reading everything out like some other countries did.
I liked doing the exercise as it was something different. I learnt that it isn’t just the MEDC’s that are spending money towards sustainable development, its LEDC’s as well, which is a good thing because we don’t want LEDC’s to develop the same way as we did, because the way we did it was using lots of raw materials and non renewable recourses.

The recycling rates that are given on the Northamptonshire council website are going vary between each authority due to a number of factors. Firstly the average size the houses in each district will effect the figures. For example an inner city district may have a high number of terrace housing, which only occupy 1-2 people, so therefore their will be less household waste produced compared to a larger house in a district on the suburbs of the Northampton, where up to 4-5 people may live. Also the bigger housing on the suburbs may have bigger gardens, so therefore more garden waste will be produced.
Secondary the rates might also vary due to peoples attitude. Some people may not be bothered about doing there bit for the environment, so they don’t bother to recycle. Also the recycling bins are kept outside, so if the weather is bad, some people might not be bothered to take the waste outside, so they will just simply but it in the bin full of household waste.

Things that could be done to improve the recycling rates are to increase the number collections. Instead of collecting the recyclable waste one every two weeks, collect it once a week because in the space of two weeks, the bins provided might get very full, so people will have no choice but to but the recyclable waste into a household waste bin. However you could also overcome this problem by providing larger bins for the houses that need them.
Also businesses and schools need to do more to recycle. At the moment most schools and businesses don’t recycle due to the costs involved. So to get them to recycle, the government could do incentives to encourage them to do so.