United Nations Debate

I feel I learnt a lot from the United Nations style debate. The country I was allocated was Ghana so I felt sure there would be lots of information available to me. Before I carried out my research I knew very little about Ghana and next to nothing about any sustainable development policies they had in place, so I was quite excited to find out more about this country. As I had assumed there was masses of information about the country online. Much of it was of little use and I found myself reading through huge documents so that I could prize out the information I felt was most vital to use in the debate.

The main issues I found were desertification and drought, lack of sanitation and clean water and deforestation. I was not surprised to learn this though as from the previous knowledge I had of Ghana I had already considered issues like these being possible challenges for the country. I was however shocked by the number of small villages and towns who were still without clean, safe drinking water, something many of us take for granted every day. It is shocking to think that an issue so small, such as providing clean water, can be such a big challenge. But with little funding Ghana continues to struggle with such issues.

I really enjoyed the debate and was interested to see what issues other countries across the world faced. There was a good variety of approaches from all countries involved and I was quite surprised at just how many countries faced similar sustainable development issues to Ghana. America, China and South Korea faced very different issues to my country, so it was interesting to see what problems they had to overcome. Some of Americas Issues were gun crime, drugs and pollution and China was facing such issues as the loss of its Panda and severe pollution problems. After hearing some of the sustainable development problems from some of the MEDC I felt Ghana was still very deserving of the money, perhaps even more so than countries such as China.

Overall I feel my countries plea for the money was very successful. We had a clear introduction that followed through to our most important sustainable development issues at present and what we felt we most needed the money for. I feel there was sufficient information in our handout, just enough to let people know what we were going to be talking about and why we felt we deserved the money. It also gave them a brief insight into Ghana and hopefully grabbed people’s attention so that they would listen to our speech and take our plea seriously.

If we were to carry out the debate again I think I would shorten out introduction a bit and try to fit in more information about our present policies and how they are working for us and push the point that the money would have a huge beneficial impact on my country allowing us to carry on working towards a more sustainable future. I would also like to rehears my speech more so that I do not feel I need the sheets of paper to help me along.

However perhaps the biggest issue overall throughout the debate and the preparation was the lack of team work. I had very little support and was left to prepare the handout and speech by myself. I do not feel my partner pulled their weight; they did very little research and did not read the handout I had produced until the day of the debate. I feel this lack of team work let our country down and put pressure on me to carry out all the work in a short space of time. On this occasion team work was not beneficial and left me feeling disappointed.

On the bright side I do feel I learnt a lot more about Sustainable Development thanks to the debate. It was interesting to see how different countries faced multiple problems surrounding the issue. I liked finding out how they could use the money in their countries to improve various situations and what policies they had in place at present and what they were hoping for in the future.

Northamptonshire joint municipal waste management strategy


Recycling is an increasingly important issue in the UK. It is something we can all do in the hope of making a difference. The county of Northamptonshire, like many others, has introduced a strategy and action plan in the hope to manage the county’s waste in a more sustainable manor. The Northamptonshire joint municipal waste management strategy is a revision of the one introduced and adopted in 2002 and the aim is to ‘produce a joint approach to managing the county’s municipal solid waste in the period from 2007/8 to 2020/21.’

One part of the strategy was the recycling and composting performance. They hope that by 2020/21 50% of household waste will be recycled or composted. The recycling rates vary across the county with numerous borough and district councils having different times of residual refuse and varying recyclable and organic waste. By having restrictions on what people can and cannot recycle the different boroughs and district councils affect the percentage of household waste recycling rates in their area. For example in 2006/07 the Corby borough council had a household recycling rate of 28.0%. Corby’s details of recyclables were paper, plastic bottles and cans. Whereas Daventry district council had a recycling rate of 47.0% and its residents were able to recycle paper, plastic bottles cans and also glass and textiles. Daventry’s recyclable waste was also collected weekly unlike Corby’s which was collected fortnightly. It also appears that the councils that had a cardboard collection had a higher percentage of recycling rates compared to those who had no cardboard collection. So perhaps by making all districts have a cardboard collection we could further still improve the recycling rates of even more of the districts.

Recycling also depends on the individual. It is up to each household to decide how they will manage their recycling. We cannot force people to recycle efficiently just because we believe it is best for the environment. Some large families with lots of children may find it very difficult to watch what goes into the normal waste bin and what gets recycled. It can also be difficult for people to decide what should go where when it comes down to some of the plastics and cans. I know endless people that still do not realise that many juice cartons are not recyclable. Of course there will always be some people that do more recycling than others. For example in East Northamptonshire the annual recycling waste produced per person is 89kg compared with just 66kg in Corby.

However by looking at table 3 in the document we can see there has been a dramatic increase in household recycling rates across the whole of Northamptonshire since 2001/02. These vast improvements are being put down to new waste collection services, including the new garden waste collection and improvement of the overall recycling performance of the Household Waste Recycling Centre.

So far it is plain to see there has been great success across Northamptonshire with recycling rates increasing dramatically, but there is always room for improvement. Perhaps rather than just trying to teach people to recycle correctly, we should be thinking about trying to help them reduce their waste in the first place. This in turn will benefit the environment and help to reduce the costs of waste management. There are lots of people who throw away food still in its packaging because it has gone past its sell by date, but if people didn’t buy as much in the first place they would not be stuck in that position. So it is not just about what we can and can’t recycle but also about being sensible when it comes to buying products. By working together I see no reason why Northamptonshire cannot further improve its Household Waste Recycling Rates.