At the September meeting of the Salisbury U3A, Jack Leeming announced that there are now 509 members.

Neville Jennings asked for photographs of U3A activities for the archive album, which is kept by Donald Scarfe. Please save used stamps, not milk bottle tops, for Naomi House Hospice.

There are vacancies in some groups in Sarum U3A, bird watching, poetry, wine appreciation, Scrabble, Bridge, and better use of the camera. Chris Dickson reported on the National Conference, and gave notice of a study day at King’s Court, Chandlers Ford, on October 11, on Economics, Environment and Europe.

The 19th anniversary lunch will be held on Wednesday October 25th at 12.30 in South Wilts Grammar School. Tickets are £2. Please take a plate of food, and cutlery.

John Ewington gave more details of the visit to the Black Watch on 19th November. Photo identity will be needed, and comfortable shoes, as there will be a fair amount of walking. The trip to Exeter on 18th October has some vacancies. La Boheme at the Mayflower is on 29th November. A visit to the historic dockyards at Portsmouth with an optional trip up the Spinnaker tower is planned for 13th December. He gave advance notice of a 5 day visit to Barcelona on 7th March 2007, and a 2 day trip to London on 4th to 5th June.

Martin Litherland gave a presentation on dealing with waste in Salisbury. In the year 1997/8 there were 199,000 tons of waste. In 2005/6 there were 260,000 tons. The forecast increase in 15 years would be 360,000 tons. An analysis of our dustbins has found that 42% is garden waste, 13.5% is plastic, 5% is bottles, and 22.5% is paper. There are good land fill sites in Wiltshire, but in future there must be fewer sites. The aim is to reduce the amount of waste we generate, by education and making more recycling sites available.

In the 50s, we used real nappies, fed the pig with food waste, used newspaper to light the fire and had a compost heap in the garden. There was no plastic, and bottles were returnable. There is a need for sites to recycle plastics and cardboard, and a move towards a fortnightly refuse collection is projected. Mechanical biological treatment can make waste into fuel, which could heat a town. There were several lively questions after his talk, and it left much to think about.

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