Topic: Your council, recycling & global warming

[Hyacinth]

In Birmingham, we have a fortnightly newspaper/cardboard collection, a (now limited) garden waste collection, a weekly general household rubbish collection and now a new green box into which one puts plastic & cans which gets collected every 2 weeks. So what do they do with the green box collection?

Why, they separate out the plastic from the cans & incinerate the plastic... ???

What happens to yours, do you know?

[wahaj]

Each council has a target to reach about how much of the waste they have to recycle. It's a very very low percentage....and then after that it all gets thrown into landfill.

It's the same with the green waste. They compost a percentage to sell at £3 for 15 litres and then the rest is landfilled.

Our council isn't too helpful really. We have a red box, a blue box, a grey bin, and a black bin. One week they collect the general waste in the black bin. And the second week they collect the green waste in the grey bin, and the plastic and glass in the boxes.

It's a totally useless system. I think it was great the government bought in changes to make people recycle.....but they really messed up on how they went on without it.

I don't use either of the boxes for plastic or glass. and most months i don't use the grey bin. and the black general waste bin is always over flowing and every week we have to drive down to the recycling centre to throw extra black bin bags away.

Our council isn't very incouraging or helpful to gardeners or people who persue an organic lifestyle. there are no free services....or even very cheap services like compost bins, allotments etc. Most of the allotment runners here are private.

[kt.]

we have had similar system for a couple of yrs now. Read somewhere that over 60% of recycled waste collected was put in landfill anyway. Wasnt amused after putting the effort in to help. Ask your council what percentage of recycled waste they actually recycle?  >:(

[Hyacinth]

Ask your council what percentage of recycled waste they actually recycle?  >:(

I'm going to have the opportunity to do this at the end of the month which is why I'm asking here what other councils are doing & if I can get any better ideas to put forward to them. 8)

[greyhound]

I cleared some old paint tins out of the sheds.  According to West Berks Council literature this is classed as hazardous waste, so I took it to their Newbury tip.  Asked where to put it, was told to throw it into the landfill section.

[wahaj]

I cleared some old paint tins out of the sheds.  According to West Berks Council literature this is classed as hazardous waste, so I took it to their Newbury tip.  Asked where to put it, was told to throw it into the landfill section.

eek. yea that really shouldn't be going into land fill. but then once they've reached their targets....that's where it'll be gong anyway.

Though there is one good things our recycling centre does....they have a shop and sell stuff that can be salvaged. it's the only way they can make money. but i've gone there so many times and bought loads of different pots and stuff. I saw a compost bin that i was gonna buy but someone else already had their hands on it.

[Daisy_Jane]

I had no idea councils were dumping recycled waste - are there any figures for each council wahaj? Our recycling waste is often greater than the landfill waste and it would be galling to think it is being junked..

We have instructions on what to put into the pink (plastic!) recycling bag that is collected every week, plus a separate box for glass. There is the option of paying for a green garden waste bin - which I have been using to get rid of the weedy stuff I don't want in my bin at the lottie  ;)

[froglets]

We were told this by our brown bin collection man.  Several neighbours rang up the council & were assured that recyclable waste did not go straight to landfill, but how do we know who is right?

[Hyacinth]

Jill's not able to reply on the board to this post at the mo (but Dan's working on it 8)) but has sent me this PM:-

I fought and won an anti-incinerator campaign a couple of years ago so read up hugely on this subject.  The main anomaly I spotted was that the EU and therefore the UK government have set compulsory targets for levels of recycling to be achieved but the figures are calculated from what is collected.  Therefore although your local may be collecting up to 60% in recyclables by kerbside/bottle bank/municipal recycling centres, it is what the disposal authority is doing with the waste that is the real issue, to my mind.  Here, Canterbury City Council are responsible for collection of the waste, but Kent County Council are responsible for its disposal.  Kent County Council are currently planning to build 4 new incinerators in East Kent, whilst a new 600,000 tonne incinerator near Ashford, Kent is due to come on line in the near future.  Kent, as a whole, currently produces some 850,000 tonnes of waste.  The capacity for burning waste in East Kent planned by KCC will totally undermine all attempts/efforts to reach statutory recycling targets.

Thank you Jill.

[wahaj]

I had no idea councils were dumping recycled waste - are there any figures for each council wahaj? Our recycling waste is often greater than the landfill waste and it would be galling to think it is being junked..

We have instructions on what to put into the pink (plastic!) recycling bag that is collected every week, plus a separate box for glass. There is the option of paying for a green garden waste bin - which I have been using to get rid of the weedy stuff I don't want in my bin at the lottie  ;)

I've no idea...but there was a discussion about it in the news a few months ago. Last year sometime i went to our recycling centre and there was a sign to say that "this year we have excelled our targets and recycled 36% of recyclable waste" which makes me wonder what the actual target is.

I love what labour bought to this country...and i think it's a better country since they've been in power. BUT they have made some major cockups none the less.

About 2 years ago i saw a panorama documentary which showed that one the rubbish gets to landfill, it is sorted by people there into plastics, glass, etc. BUT as they have no funding, this is only done for record purposes and the waste is then all thrown into landfill all mixed up.

And obviously you all must remember the case not too long ago where this guy accidently dumped a piece of paper in with plastic i think. He was handed a very hefty fine and had to pay it.

It seems that the government has made a really bad, quick fix to a major problem just to appear to be meeting EU standards. But it's all a bunch of crap. So i refuse to recycle my glass and plastic. I just use the general waste bin...and the grey bin for my green waste from the garden.

[wahaj]

Right...I just rung Kettering Borough Council....our local council...and this is what the lady told me:

At first she said that all of it gets recycled. And then i said...that i knew this wasn't the case...so she went looking for info and:

The government target for all counties from March 2004 - March 2005 was 20%.
March 2005 - March 2006 was actually lowered down to 18%

The local target for kettering was 20%.

She shockingly also told me that by March 2006, the councils managed to recycle 14%....and are aiming to recycle 33% by march 2007.

I told her how absurd this whole thing was and she said that it's not really the concil's fault. The government has set all these targets that bare no relation to reality as they've not received nearly enough funding. She said they had lost their buyer for plastic and are still on the lookout for one....so the amount they need to recycle to reach targets, they're going to store. And the rest will be thrown away.

[Daisy_Jane]

Wow, thanks for doing the research wahaj. I've been pretty naive then in thinking  recycling waste gets recycled... >:( 

Makes what you put in the shopping trolley even more important..

[wahaj]

Wow, thanks for doing the research wahaj. I've been pretty naive then in thinking  recycling waste gets recycled... >:( 

Makes what you put in the shopping trolley even more important..

it's not naive love...it's what the governemtn keeps telling us they're doing. Even the lady at the council didn't have a clue till she went asking for me.

All the ads suggest that our waste is this precious material that they can turn into anything in a matter of days. I'm sure it's possible if the right funding was given...but there isn't. It's a bad idea for a bad project that's badly funded and badly implemented.

[Heldi]

I'm thoroughly depressed now  :(

When I lived in Germany we had three bins. Black one for foodstuff. Green for paper and blue for plastic. We also had three crates for clear,brown and green glass. Black and blue bin were collected fortnightly in rotation. Paper once a month. Glass once a month. (Always remember there was a big debate between the RAF and the German Authority as to which crate malibu bottles go in to lol.) Every six months a skip would be left for a week or so for hazardous waste. Batteries,paint tins and the like.  Also every six months big goods would be picked up. Furniture,kitchen appliances that sort of thing. Always thought it was a good system. Bear in mind this was ten years ago aswell and it was a system in place long before I got there.

Here we have a blue bin for recycling plastic, paper and cans. Another for everything else. You can join a garden waste scheme. I haven't, as all weeds are given to the hens to sort through.  

[southernsteve]

She said they had lost their buyer for plastic and are still on the lookout for one....so the amount they need to recycle to reach targets, they're going to store.

This is the bit that really gets my goat. Are we recycling to SAVE THE PLANET, or to make money for someone. If the politicians were really serious about recycling, everything that could be recycled should be regardless of targets or funding. I am sure more people would be prepared to go to the effort of sorting bits out if this was the case.

On another front, what about the people who produce most of the rubbish in the first place, and no I don't mean you and me. Isn't it about time pressure and possably penalties were put on the retailers to stop them producing all the excess packaging etc. Why are a pack of four tins of baked beans wrapped in a cellophane wrapper, cheaper than the same four tins sold separately? Do we need three or four layers of plastic and foam protecting our pears. If we start getting charged extra to take our rubbish away, I for one will stand at the checkout at Tesco and unwrap every thing after it has passed through. They can then get rid of it. I am sure if most customers did this they would soon buck their ideas up.

Sorry rant over,

Steve

[Tulipa]

Steve, I totally agree, the packaging is there because of greed on the part of the manufacturers.  We are not going to use the beans any quicker by having 4 tins in one go, but we all buy them because they are cheaper. 

And so much packaging is there to make the product look bigger than it is, to make us think we are getting more for our money, it's cheating and dishonest as well as environmentally unfriendly. 

I get so upset at all the packaging used, there is no need for most of it.  I am trying not to buy stuff with too much these days, or only things that I can recycle.

I saw in a magazine that one of the supermarkets is putting chopped tomatoes into tetrapaks rather than tins, we cannot recycle them here so it seems silly, I for one will not be buying them.

I can rant too! Don't think I have ever done this before, sorry! :-[

I'll go..
T.

[cornykev]

:D Sorry Steve I no you are bang on but the thought of you unwrapping everything while the security guard is trying to drag you out the shop hilarious.By the way I have two black bins for paper, tin cans, plastic and glass bottles etc, the green bin only gets thick branches the rest is mine. ;D

[manicscousers]

our mate fills his green bin then drags it all the way to the allotments to put in his compost heap  ;D

[LILACSPLASH]

our mate fills his green bin then drags it all the way to the allotments to put in his compost heap  ;D

good on him sounds like some of the things I do ;D