Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Plastic Farms Need Plastic Farmers

According to La Voz de Almería, our plastic farms generate one million kilos of plastic waste each year. The plastic used to keep the hot moist atmosphere within and the burning sun and dry winds without perishes after a couple of years use. A company called Cicloagro has the concession to collect and recycle. How well they do it...?
Anyhow, in the same article, we are told that there are 30,000 hectares (300 square kilometres) of plastic farms in the province - the unsightly 'invernaderos' of western Almería.
I asked a farmer about this - 'Weren't there meant to be 30,000 hectares of invernaderos around twenty years ago - I keep seeing new ones springing up'.
According to him - and he's a member of the fruit-growers association CASI - there is now more than double the oft-reported figure, at 70,000 hectares - seven hundred square kilometres of plastic farms - stretched from Adra to Nijar.
One of the new problems for this important agricultural industry is that the Chinese - who used to import all the used plastic - have now stopped doing so. So Cicloagro, who's concession comes up soon, says they are not particularly interested in renegotiating another five years worth.
So, what will happen to the plastic?
Well, as the town hall in El Ejido has suggested, they could ask the Ministry of the Environment to come and lug it all off somewhere.
Just please, Fellows, don't chuck it all in the sea!

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