When first given the assignment brief of having to do a presentation on the sustainable deveolpment strategies o a country, i paniced. When i found out my country to research was Bulgaria, i paniced even more. I honestly had no idea what to do to begin with, thank goodness we were given starter websites to help us all out. however, after learning just how small a country Bulgaira is....i realsied how tuff it would be to find relevant information linking sustainable development and bulgaria together. And you know what? It was.

However, I did find this exercise quite enjoyable and interesting. The major things i learnt from this exercise are the different sustainable strategies carried out across all nations and not just our own, though ours hard very little in any plans for sustainability. Its so small! With such a tiny population, its hard to be surprisd tht they would make to much of an effort, apart from protecing their mountain ranges. Not being able to find much didnt really surprise me, however i was disappointed, especially after being in the debate and hearing all the strategies presented by other countries, i felt that our efforts, well our countries efforts were pretty pointless. I thought that Hannah and Sam did a fantastic presentation on Denmark, they really went into depth on how their countries efforts for sustainable development are far superior to most other countries researched by other groups.

I thought mine and Tristans' presentation went fairly well, we presented the best information we could find on Bulgaria's policies. By the end of the speech i was at a loss for words as i couldn't think of anything else to say...stutter central. The handout given to us was useful as a base for us to build our research on, but personnally i didn't really use it. What would i do differently if i were to do this exercise again? Pick a more ineresting country to research about, it would have been far more interesting to actaully LEARN about a countries sustainable plans then just to learn how Bulgaria wants to keep its landscape clean.

But as i said earlier, i did find this exercise enjoyable, especailly the debate part. I like listening to people and their views, though i wish i had contributed more in the discussion between countries, oh well, theres always room for improvement for next time.

I learnt about Agenda 21! A plan laid down by the UN in which to unite countries and help develop ways to sustain our world for future generations, whether that be for tomorrows generation or one in 50 years time. I also learnt a lot about wind farms and other eco friendly ways in which Denmark are becoming incredibly resourceful. errr...whether i actually learnt anything else about sustainable development from this exercise is not seeming likely at this present moment in time.

I feel that i have learnt how to communicate better with my team memebers so that we could produce a relevant talk to the debate. We found that when research into something very specific about a country, you need to read in depth at a large variety of sources to find useful information. Bullet pointing our work made us actually read our notes, as we had to understand them to present them and therefore were able to focus on the audience.

Too busy to recycle?

Sooo recycling, not the most interesting topic to discuss, everyone tries to avoid it, but it is in fact a major issue that needs to be taken head on. After reading the article, i found that the targets set by the Northamptonshire authorities recycling strategy in 2002 are already being reached. i saw that at the beginning when the scheme was first introduced, the rate of recycling was very low but has dramatically increased as the community became more aware of different recycling methods.

Rates can vary for all sorts of reasons:

• depending on the time of year
• if there are celebrations
• communities being introduced to the strategies gradually, not all quite at the same time
• people having to adjust

• some people may not have wanted to help contribute, may have seen it as too much effort

.....though what is so bad about putting one piece of recyclable rubbish in a different bin? some people i'll never quite understand, surely no ones lifestyle is really THAT busy? Or are we really so busy nowadays that helping our planet isn't important anymore. Granted, some people may be...preoccupied, but we can all do our smnall bit to help out.

I know that i don't do half as much recycling that i should, and i really wish i did more, doen't mean that i'm not trying though.
What i think can be done to improve recycling rates:

• provide households with better storage facilities for recycling
• provide enough boxes
• collect the recyclable waste more often so that it doesn'tcollect in households, making them untidy and therefore making the owner unhappy/uncomfortable in their own home, and therefore not recycle as they want the waste gone as soon as possible.

Some may say being paid to recycle would help, and yes it would provoke people to do it, but it's not really helping if you're being paid to do it, plus, where wouild the money come from? The council does not have enough in their budget to pay everyone in the country to recycle...unless you want to raise taxes

Aplogies for such a late blog, and for it not being very long/any good, hopefully i'll improve and make them more interesting again soon.