Sir - Micheal McAleer's Copenhagen Letter (The Irish Times, April 17th) was interesting in regard to the pride the Danes take in their nation and their environment. This is typical not just of Denmark, but of Scandinavia generally. In Finland, every apartment block has a shed in the yard in which trolley bins are individually labelled for normal refuse, paper, glass, batteries, metal and biodegradable matter. It is the same in Sweden.
The objection of the European Commission to returning bottles to shops for reuse - because it supposedly puts imported beer at a disadvantage - is complete nonsense. In Finland, the same bottle-return system has been in use for many years in supermarkets and many brands of imported beer are on the shelves, including Irish stout. Like the Danes, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish rural inhabitants also have their own flagpoles set squarely in the middle of their gardens and raise the flag on national holidays. Every Finnish apartment block also has a flagpole, and when a resident dies, the national flag is placed at half-mast, clearly showing that the nation is thanking that person. There is nothing threatening about this form of nationalism. In contrast, the Tricolour is rarely seen in Ireland except at very specific events, as if it were somehow too nationalistic to fly it more frequently. In all these matters, we can learn from our Scandinavian friends. - Yours, etc., - Niall O'Donoghue,
Jyvaskyla, Finland.