Topic: Wondering about recycling

[Sarah-b]

Wondering if anyone knows anything about recycling.
It is always presented to us as the greatest good that one can do for the environment. But I read an article a while back in the New Scientist that seemed to imply that it is not as simple as that. For example, apparently  there paper recycling centres are few and far between (I think they said there was only one in the UK). That means there is a lot of traffic caused in that one place. When they recycle the paper they end up with a huge load of black sludge from the ink, that they  are not sure what to do with for the best. The botttom line was that on balance New Scientist was suggesting that x percent of paper should be burnt, x percent put in landfill, and only x percent to be recycled.
Now, what about glass? All those bottles we put into recycling bins. What happens to them? Why are they not refilled? Years ago, you could take some bottles back to the shop and get money back. In France they used to do that with wine bottles. Surely melting them down is not environment effective? And is the glass re-used? When you find "Recycled glass" in craft shops, it always looks a bit strange. Does that mean that the majority of glass isn't in fact recycled at all? Are there mountains of glass waiting to be recycled somewhere?
And what about "plastic film" - on packets, it often tells you that the film is recyclable, then you go to the recycling centre and there is nowhere to put it.
What about cardboard - is it better to compost it than to send it for recycling? ie, is the point of recycling to provide an alternative to landfill or is to there to save resources in the first place?
Just wondering...
Sarah.

[tim]

That's a can of worms!!

One's local council produces a leaflet on it, but that doesn't scratch the surface. And it's all now being sold to China?? = Tim

[Doris_Pinks]

We all recycle round here, and have a huge new tip that recycles almost everything, even rubble!
I have a funny feeling I read somewhere that they use recycled glass to make new roads, don't quote me it could be a figment of my very vivid imagination! We have council benches around that are made from recycled shopping bags!  But as Tim says, I think is is a can o worms!! You hear some good, some bad stories, but it makes me feel that in some small way I am helping the planet! (though having loads of bins for this and that around a small house drives me nuts!) DP

[Jill]

Our paper and card goes to Aylesford Paper Mill.  I've seen a video and they have to scim off the black sludge.  (Can't remember what they do with it.)  Rumour has it that our green bottles get shipped to China, but rest of glass supposedly gets recycled.  Our council doesn't collect plastic film, only rigid plastic (bottles etc), some of which allegedly gets turned into drain pipes etc, but most of which is turned into fuel pellets for the Slough incinerator.  Believe there's only one company in the country recycling our cans (Alucan?) but hear they're quite successful.  

Here our City Council is responsible for collecting the waste.  They collect recyclables (paper, card, cans, rigid plastic, foil) in clear sacks, residual waste in black bins and green (garden) waste in green bins.  By 2010 I think all councils will have to be offering separate collections of at least 2 recyclables - EU regs.  Because our City Council is ahead of the game, our recycling rates are the highest in the county.  HOWEVER, the City Council is only responsible for collecting the waste: it is the County Council's responsibility to dispose of or find a market for it.  The recycling targets are based on what is collected by the City Council, so the County Council could, if it chooses, just lump all the separate collections together, bung them in the incinerator they're building at Allington or the landfill in Canterbury and still claim we're recycling wondrous percentages.

Sorry, this babbling habit is catching...

[SpeedyMango]

Hello.

Used to know a bit about recycling, as I did a 4 yr post-grad course on Environmental Technology.

It is a can of worms. Essentially everyone should try to do the 3 Rs: Reduce - Re-use - Recycle to cut down on their waste - especially packaging waste (composting organic matter is an obvious one to everyone here!). However, reducing energy and resource consumption by waste management and recycling is something that has a lot of factors, including there being a valid use for the material at the end of the waste stream, the energy required to convert the waste into something usable, and the transport requirements for moving it about. However, these days there are more and more initiatives to use recycled materials, most of which make sense.

Waste paper is very dependant upon the market - a few years ago I heard of Materials Reclaimation Facilities that collected all the paper from the domestic waste stream, baled it, stored it awaiting a good price on waste paper but regularly ended up landfilling the lot!

Glass can be recycled into more glass products, and uses less energy than starting from scratch (but one brown bottle in a clear glass bin means the whole lot has to be downgraded to filler for construction work, so that's where most of it goes).

Metals have been recycled for years, are relatively easy to separate, and as they are melted don't need much cleaning. Transport is usually the issue, as metal items are heavy and bulky to move - better to crush metal items (e.g. cans) so someone isn't moving fresh air about the place.

Plastics are difficult, it really depends on what your local authority is doing about recycling - where we live there is no collection of plastics, but where my folks live they have a crate to collect plastics in which gets emptied once a week. Depending on the plastic there are a variety of uses for it, from making flower pots, the 'mock-wood' street furniture and fencing you sometimes see around, to filler in other plastic products.

The real issue is getting as 'clean' a supply of recyclables as possible - contaminated by neither 'dirt' or other materials. This means that less energy has to be expended in converting the recyclate into something else. Workplace schemes for collecting only white printer paper, or plastic vending cups, or aluminium cans are good, and there are penty of companies about that run such schemes, often for free. End of life vehicles are increasingly being scrapped in such a way that most recyclables are reclaimed before the metal bits are melted down. IT equipment and white goods are a major problem, as they often contain high levels of lead (in the solder) and other nasties, that need removing. Shipping it all to China is not an ideal option, I feel. The labour costs may be cheaper, but the transport costs (emissions and energy) must be huge. Hopefully more intelligent design of products with end-of-life issues in mind will make it easier to recycle things in the future.

Regarding domestic waste it really is a case of everyone doing as much as they can, given limitations of cost, time and space at home - but the Government must make an effort too, in getting local authorities to improve their practices. It's a shame that Tony Bluergh only seems to make some of the right noises about the Environment, without any real changes taking place.

Blimey what a ramble! I do apologise...!

[Sarah-b]

Well it definitely is an interesting subject and it really is a can of worms.
You see, I think for people who are a "bit worried" about the environment, it's all too easy to shove something into a "recycling" bin and feel absolved of guilt.
Trouble is, the best thing to do, like Speedy said, is to "reduce". Now that clearly isn't happening. The packaging industry must be making a fortune and there don't seem to be any incentives coming from the government on how to reduce this problem.
And as for China, judging by the content of our toy cupboard, and the knee-deep mass of plastic objects all over our carpets, they must be shipping plastic over here by the freighter-load.
Ramble, ramble. And I don't feel like I've got any control over the rubbish that ends up in my house. It seems like anybody and everybody can afford to buy your children bits of plastic nonsense on a whim. And it's not even like the charity chops want great sack-loads of plastic toys - cos no sensible parent wants to buy any more of it. And god help the 3rd world, if we ship it back to them.

At least when I pick something from the lotty, it doesn't come packaged in plastic, but I do drive there (reaches for self-flagellation equipment....)

Sarah.

[Jill]

Know someone who shops regularly at the local supermarket.  When she gets home she takes all the packaging off everything, transfers the contents to jars, and containers, and then walks back to the supermarket and hands all the empty packets to customer services for them to deal with.  She also composts her kitchen waste (she's vegetarian) and recycles everything she can.  The quantity of "residual" waste collected from her house for landfill is no more than a carrier bag's worth.  

We've got ours down to a kitchen pedal bin's worth and much of that is plastic film.  Can't do much more without Govt/LA help.

[Bionic Wellies]

Hi,

I had every intention of having a good rant & rave about ... well about everything - especially HRH goverment's attitude to preservation and recycling, but about individual's too.  But having written a long(ish) note (it started to look like a 50,000 word essay) I deleted it all before I posted it because I guess that not everyone feels quite so strongly about these things.

-- Biting my lip ...
-- Alan

[Jill]

I do (feel strongly, that is), Alan, so feel free to rant and rave ;D

[Mrs Ava]

We recycle whatever we can - all kitchen waste into the compost, food waste (if practical) to the birds, cans, bottles, rags/clothes/shoes into our green bin collected fortnightly by council, paper into paper sack, fortnightly collection, 'other' garden waste into brown bin, collected fortnightly (I have probably only used this 3 or 4 times during the year and then it has been filled with horrible weeds from the allotment and nothing from my garden!) then black bin to take regular household rubbish.  Our local tip is complicated to use as it is a series of different sections depending what you are disposing off and there are bottle, paper, clothes, book, and can 'bins' in all of our supermarket car parks, some schools and some pubs.

The thing that amuses me the most is outside my nans house in Clapham, there are a series of bottle banks and she watched people religiously sorting the green from the brown from the clear....she then watches as the big lorry comes and dumps them all into the same skip in the back, mixing them all up again!

[DolphinGarden]

EJ,  I was in a local "Bring" centre here in the summer and that happened. I asked the custodian was it not a bit stupid to sort, then mix them in the truck. He said that each coloured bottle bits were sectioned off from each other in the back of the truck...It did look a bit dodge though at first.

[ken (69)]

My folks in Cambridgeshire are about to have  Brown Bins  supplied..for...garden waste.This.. in a rural area where, as far as I know all is composted anyway.Agree about the transport  cost of recycling, tis all a racket.

[Doris_Pinks]

My pet peeve with our council is not the fact that we have to recycle round here,I am all for it, if it helps! but now we can't put kitchen compost waste into our green bin. (I don't cos mine gets composted, but many others used to do!) We do not have curbside collection for bottles (a few of them in our house!!) or plastics. So we take them to a local recycling place. (in car of course,) We only get our household rubbish collected once every 2 weeks, which is a bit of a nuisance with 4 in the house,(especially in the summer heat!) so yet another trip to the tip, (using car again) and after WE do all the work our DEAR council ups our tax!! >:( Rotten toads, we should pay less cos we make the effort! Maybe thems that doesn't bother should pay more!!! :-\

[Roy Bham UK]

Geez Doris a collection once a fortnight? :o I hope our council don’t get to hear about that up here, heaven forbid we struggle to get all our waste into one and sometimes two bags in a week and there are only two of us (TMI). :o
Is that the norm in the southern regions I wonder? ???

I hire a van once week to dispose of my bottles. ;D

[Jill]

Our City Council is introducing a fortnightly collection of black bin (residual) waste in the new year, ostensibly to encourage us to recycle more.  It'll be coming your way soon, Roy, just you wait and see!

Son no 2's main task in the house is taking the bottles to the bottle bank up the road.  Not willing to say how many visits a week he makes tho' ;D

[Kerry]

it will reach you roy, no doubt!  government targets see!
east of you in leicestershire we have just had this introduced by our district council. just gone over to wheelie bins, every fortnight for household waste, alternate fortnights for the 'green' waste. which naffs me off somewhat as i compost the majority anyway. and there's been a masssive increase in tax.
they also have had protests in summer about once a fortnight not being enough.

we do have an element of recycling too-bottles, tins, foil, paper and clothes are taken, but not plastic.

my major bugbear is our ash- obviously the new bins are plastic, so hot ash.....!
so, out of our own money we've purchased new metal containers for ash, this has to then be tiped into the household waste bin. it takes up half the wheelie bin in winter. there are no concessions to those in the coal areas, which is a lot here, it's just tough. and they wanted it in a plastic bag separately!! fat chance!!
grrr! must stop now!

[Mrs Ava]

We used to have fortnightly collections of household rubbish, but during last summers heat, our local tory councillor received over 500 photographs of wheelie bins full of maggots, bluebottle and flies!  He used the wheelie bin issue to get back into power really as he promised if we voted him in, weekly collections would begin again asap, and you know what, he got in, and amazingly, within weeks we were back on weekly collections!  Now we recycle, I rarely fill our wheelie and that is with 4+1 (stepdaughter), unless I am having a sort out of course.

My mums council provide them with clear plastic bags for garden waste but only collect during the summer months, so now when she could do with it due to all of the leaves - she isn't a gardener and doesn't compost unless I ask her sweetly, they don't take, so she has to drive to the tip to fill up the green waste bin for them!!  >:(

[Roy Bham UK]

I will not welcome fortnightly collections and will put up a fight if it is to be. >:(
What really peeves me is when I accumilate more bulk rubbish like the remnants of decorating old carpet etc and load up the car to make a trip to the tip and along the way see rubbish that mindless fly tippers have dumped. >:(
I then phone our council who will willingly send out a large wagon and clear it up within 24/48 hours. If I politly ask them to collect my said bulk rubbish they tell me if I'm in a hurry, dispose of it myself, otherwise they will collect from my front garden within 3 weeks ???

[Dorothy]

We are being given two extra wheelies next year for recycling and will then have them emptied on alternate weeks.  If we wish an uplift of a large item then there is a separate charge of £15.

We also have the second highest rate of Council Tax in Scotland. >:(

[DolphinGarden]

Howya,

our wheelie bins were not collected yesterday. Maybe they're going to fortnightly. Only two of us, not much stuff, compost all kitchen waste, recylce glass, paper and cans, tins in green bin. A young couple 3 doors up with a 1 yr old, bin overflowing. Mostly leaves this week, I think.  It's the big story over here these last three years, bringing in a bin tax. Double taxation. Big meeting of dublin city council next monday night. Setting the fees for next year. If noone pays why bother. If councillers vote down the charges, the city manager annuls the council and we get a city ceo type person who decides him/herself.  I recylce the demands and threatening letters into the green bin.

Fly tipping is rampant.  And going to increase.  Must remember what happened to that inquiry into the hospital waste (a children's hospital near me) that was found dumped on a local green area/ football pitch.

Used a load of 2L bottles of milk cut in half to plant up to 50 chestnuts this year. Looking to get rid of the top halfs!!!  Need a lift to the bring centre for plastics. I have them all in sacks.  A bit  unsightly.  I have REALLY long hedges out back, and can't compost it all.  I have to pay to get rid of it i.e. at a council compost centre or just dump it in the weekly pick up.  Our Environment minister just spent E52million (30million stg) on an electronic voting system that has been scrapped. Authorities got rid of old equipment anticipating electronic version.  had to buy all new stuff.  Heard on radio today that Health minister spent E130million commissioning reports, which gather dust....

Getting back to rubbish, they are in Dublin determined to go to a pay by weight system in the new year, but people will just tip their stuff in next door's bin. Guaranteed.  You'll need a sentry for your wheelie bin.

Had to laugh at Ken68, brown bins in the rural areas!!!

I need on of them.

A couple of years ago, the city council in Cork refused to collect rubbish from houses who hadn't paid their bin tax.  Households brought their stuff to the steps of city hall. Legally they had to tidy it up and collect all paid and unpaid households.  Quickly, rather efficiently, and bypassing other needy legislation, the laws were changed.  Like in the uk where the number one issue is banning foxhunting when there are other more important issues 10 a penny that should be looked at first. Mad innit?

My ash is building up and up. Mostly turf ash, bits of wood. Most of my garden is grass, only a small area of open soil.  I hate to just bung it in with the regular rubbish.

ramble ramble   sorry.

ok, just one more bit of good news. In 1990 they banned smokey coal in Dublin, so less people die of lung complaints every year, similar to the Clean Air Act in the UK, I suppose. Dramatically less so.  And 4 years ago they put a 15c tax on the normal tesco type plastic bags. Worked a treat.  
And NO SMOKING IN PUBLIC PLACES.
I changed my mind, Ireland is great after all.....