The paper ones. Theres nothing that cant be recycled in the materials but apparently its thickness means that it needs a different method to recycle it and seemingly many centres have difficulty seperating the straws.
I went to a Flood Prevention seminar a few years ago, held at Yeovil Town’s ground interestingly, and learnt quite a bit. It seems there are 2 main types of inland flooding, both ultimately caused by rainfall of course. Pluvial flooding is when you have a rainstorm and the surface runoff from hillsides exceeds the drainage capacity and you end up with water going through homes. This is made worse by building houses on hillsides, as obviously putting tarmac and concrete down decreases the ability of rainfall to soak away. Builders are often told nowadays to install attenuation tanks in new estates on hills, with capacity to contain rain from “100 year storm + 40%” weather events. As the people in Calderdale in Yorkshire will tell you, however, they have just had their third 100 year storm in the last 10 years.
Build them on stilts, or as the bbc article mentions, build them with the garage underneath so that the living accommodation is well away from the ground. Could certainly make flooding events less traumatic and costly.
I’m involved, at the lowest level of local government, with considering planning applications and surface water runoff has become a major factor in the last few years. As you say, there is an inverse ratio between the number of houses or roads built and the drainage capacity of the land. Most of the flooding issues in my mostly hillside village are pluvial, but lower down the watercourse in Midsomer Norton the flood defences on the River Somer were built in the early 1970’s and are struggling. The picture is repeated, of course, across the whole country, the whole world indeed. Until the world wakes up it can only get worse.
I was flooded out 4 years ago and the power tripped out at the fuse box. We managed to get it back on again so presumably Western Power weren’t involved in any decision making!
I take your point, but it might be worth also considering the number of people killed by non-self-driven cars, which in 2016 (latest figures available) was estimated at 1,350,000 worldwide.
