Recyling

[YorkshireBear]

I am aware many on here may not agree with me but personally i believe basic recycling should be mandatory in this country, in similar ways to other countries around Europe. From a silly conversation in our recycling lecture yesterday i started this e-petition.

If you feel same please sign it. I just want to see how high it can get.

Thread can also be used for general discussion.

 

[GB]

Councils should do more to encourage it. We used to have just one green recycling bin where the stuff was sorted by the council at the recycling center. We now have 4 and have to sort it ourselves before putting it out and they only collect certain types on certain weeks.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Councils should do more to encourage it. We used to have just one green recycling bin where the stuff was sorted by the council at the recycling center. We now have 4 and have to sort it ourselves before putting it out and they only collect certain types on certain weeks.

That's where recycling falls down imho.... that is confusing not helpful to many people. At mine we have general bin one week then both recycling bins week after then general bin again and so on... which is fairly easy to follow.

 

[LE Greys]

We had kerbside boxes at one point, but one of the pubs has a recycling point and there are others at the nearest supermarket. The box was turned into a cat shelter in the garden. However, we also had a brown bin for compostable stuff, and that has been much more successful. It alternates weekly with the regular bin. Not sure where the stuff goes, though. I'm never quite certain that it doesn't end up in landfill anyway.

 

[High Dyke]

I agree about councils. My local district council recently revised their guidelines about what can and can't be recycled. Previously some items of food packaging that were accepted, no longer aren't - classed by the council as "crinkly wrap". This despite the fact the packaging has the recycling symbol on it. That in itself is another problem...the marking of packaging to show whether or not it can be recycled. Some manufacturers are better than others when marking their packaging, whereas with others it a bit of a ponderous challenge.

Perhaps if there was some standardised system for packaging to be marked then greater use of reycling may occur.

At home we recycle as much as possible - usually filling our fortnightly bin; whereas the alternate landfill bin rarely gets above half full. At work i try to encourage colleaugues to do their bit, many do, but many don't either.

 

[LexyBoy]

I'm not sure about putting the responsibility on the public, but councils should (be made to) do more to encourage it for sure, and there should be more cooperation nationwide to ensure that facilities can be provided which may not be economical for single councils to run. I'd want to see meaningful reductions in packaging of supermarket products as well.

The differing policies don't help either - here we have a black bin for landfill and a red (!) bin for recycling, which are collected on alternate weeks. However there's no collection of glass, which is the heaviest part of the recycling, so it's a case of either lug it to the recycling centre or bin it.

It's a shame also that food waste isn't collected in more areas (some which did do previously have now stopped). Food makes up quite a bit of landfill and releases methane as it decays which if not trapped is a greenhouse gas. Home composting is OK but can only be used with raw vegetable matter, plus it's not an option for many people.

Unfortunately the push towards incinerators for electricity generation is reducing the incentive for councils to recycle, as they are often opened under PFI with a long term (up to 20 years) guarantee of a certain tonnage of refuse to burn. Reducing the amount of rubbish too far would put the council at risk of compensation payouts.

 

[Johnuk123]

I agree with recycling but as a great deal of it simply gets buried in China/India and Indonesia after we ship it to them we might as well not bother.

 

[PaxVobiscum]

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/48870

Make basic recycling compulsary.

Responsible department: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Ensure all basic recyclable materials such as paper, glass and suitable plastics are recycled by all by making it compulsary. Similar to schemes in other countries around Europe such as Germany and Sweden.

How about "Make Basic Spelling compulsory"?

If I may have one of my rare serious moments: if you want people to associate themselves with a petition it has to be presented with care.

 

[fgwrich]

I agree about councils. My local district council recently revised their guidelines about what can and can't be recycled. Previously some items of food packaging that were accepted, no longer aren't - classed by the council as "crinkly wrap". This despite the fact the packaging has the recycling symbol on it. That in itself is another problem...the marking of packaging to show whether or not it can be recycled. Some manufacturers are better than others when marking their packaging, whereas with others it a bit of a ponderous challenge.

Perhaps if there was some standardised system for packaging to be marked then greater use of reycling may occur.

At home we recycle as much as possible - usually filling our fortnightly bin; whereas the alternate landfill bin rarely gets above half full. At work i try to encourage colleaugues to do their bit, many do, but many don't either.

Same here, as for the Plastic symbols - Basingstoke's Borough Council / Veolia are very very fussy with Plastic recyling, so much so that you almost might as well just give up. My father even used to drive up to the recycling centre in Newbury with most of our plastics purely because they could recycle the various different types. Surprise Surprise, Veolia took over that site / contract and changed the Plastic rules again.

As for the different bins, that's something i'd like here too. But, and this is something i'm also confused with - We recently received kerbside tubs for glass. Now, why is it we're told to separate glass at a recycling centre when the Kerbside collections all throw it into one dustcart and break it up in one?

 

[YorkshireBear]

How about "Make Basic Spelling compulsory"?

If I may have one of my rare serious moments: if you want people to associate themselves with a petition it has to be presented with care.

My inbuilt spell checker in google chrome corrected me on compulsory as it has just attempted to now too. As i am dyslexic i just believed it...

Slightly embarrassing.

 

[PaxVobiscum]

My inbuilt spell checker in google chrome corrected me on compulsory as it has just attempted to now too. As i am dyslexic i just believed it...

Slightly embarrassing.

My apologies for causing (or contributing to) your embarrassment.

I actually checked it before I posted in case it was another weird transatlantic take on English, but couldn't find any reference to "compulsary," so thinking I had eliminated that possibility. Oops

(It autocorrected twice trying to post this).

 

[YorkshireBear]

Haha don't apologise its alright! I spelt it wrong should have checked.

Could be worse its not that obvious.... Spelling basic basik would be far worse!

 

[deltic1989]

We have 2 bins. Green for the normal stuff and brown for recycleing, collected on alternate weeks. It's pretty easy to follow.
If you do by mistake put one wrong thing in your brown bin (even if it's tiny) the bin men will refuse to take the bin and you are stuck with a full bin for a fortnight.
I can see the point in not collecting it if its full of the wrong stuff but one tiny little bit is takeing the Micheal.

 

[All Line Rover]

I am aware many on here may not agree with me but personally i believe basic recycling should be mandatory in this country

I agree.

Our local council provides an excellent service - we can recycle as much waste as we want and have a small black bin for non-recyclable waste. We have a caddy for food waste, a bucket for paper/clothes/glass/etc and a second bucket for plastic/tins/etc, which is simple enough. The binmen come round once a week a rather odd looking truck and sort the waste into appropriate compartments on the kerbside.

My frustration is not with my council but with the insistence of many companies to use black plastic, which no council I am aware of will accept for recycling. Clothes hangers, fruit, sausages, ready meals, etc - all use an abundance of black plastic which is often totally unnecessary.

 

[starrymarkb]

Maybe Worth putting a deposit on glass/plastic bottles. Say 25p or 50p

This is the case in Germany, with the Pfand system - supermarkets have machines for collecting bottles, automatically sorting for recycling (the bottles are marked with a barcode indicating their deposit and which bin the machine needs to put them into). The machine then issues a voucher for money off the shop or cash from the till.

[youtube]eElEpGlSJjk[/youtube]

 

[Zoidberg]

Here, we have alternate weekly collections of landfill rubbish and recycling rubbish.

Landfill week is easy - a single wheelie bin.

Recycling week is a pain; a garden rubbish wheelie, a box for papers, a box for cans and glass, a bag for plastics (but no black plastic) and a bag for cardboard.

So, folk are expected to find space to house all the different containers AND segregate the rubbish.

In my opinion if the council has recycling targets to meet it should do the work and take away a single bin and sort out the stuff at its depot - that is what should be mandatory.

 

[transmanche]

In my opinion if the council has recycling targets to meet it should do the work and take away a single bin and sort out the stuff at its depot.

Which is fine... but everyone has to be prepared to pay for it via their Council Tax.

 

[Zoidberg]

Which is fine... but everyone has to be prepared to pay for it via their Council Tax.

Why? It's already paid to deal with the rubbish. It's just doing it on the cheap by having the citizens do its job for it and pocketing the cash, or, rather, squandering it.

But it's getting to the stage that I can't be bothered with the hassle any more and since I've enough room in the landfill bin for all the recyclables (well, apart from garden rubbish), I'm sorely tempted to just bung it all in there and have the council take away the recycling containers (apart from the garden rubbish wheelie).

 

[transmanche]

Why? It's already paid to deal with the rubbish.

Ah, you believe in the "I want someone else to do it for me, but I don't want to pay for it" system...
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

But it's getting to the stage that I can't be bothered with the hassle any more

Really? Is putting stuff in different bins that difficult?

 

[Zoidberg]

Ah, you believe in the "I want someone else to do it for me, but I don't want to pay for it" system...

It's already paid to deal with the rubbish. I want value for money.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

...
Really? Is putting stuff in different bins that difficult?

It's an unnecessary inconvenience - that and arranging for the storage of all the containers.

 

[transmanche]

It's already paid to deal with the rubbish. I want value for money.

No, you want something for nothing. Your current Council Tax bill reflects the current level of service. If you want the council to do more, you pay more.

It's an unnecessary inconvenience - that and arranging for the storage of all the containers.

Wow, you must live in a very small home.

 

[WSW]

I am aware many on here may not agree with me but personally i believe basic recycling should be mandatory in this country, in similar ways to other countries around Europe. From a silly conversation in our recycling lecture yesterday i started this e-petition.

If you feel same please sign it. I just want to see how high it can get.

Thread can also be used for general discussion.

My local council keeps changing what it will/will not accept. They said it was all down to "market forces". If they can't get someone to take it then it's landfill. Save the world? Only if the "market" allows it.

How do other European countries get round that one?

Steve

 

[Zoidberg]

No, you want something for nothing. Your current Council Tax bill reflects the current level of service. If you want the council to do more, you pay more.

Wow, you must live in a very small home.

You're on the wind-up now - enjoy yourself but I'm not taking the bait.

 

[LE Greys]

It seems that the biggest problems are storage and sorting. I can sympathise with that, I was the major recyler in my student flat. Everyone there got the hand of filling the bags quickly, it was a question of carting the whole lot down to the recycling point at the other end of halls and getting rid of it that was the problem. (Someone else provided the bags, by the way.) I rather enjoy filling bottle banks, it's the one time you're allowed to break all the glass available, but can and paper banks were a bit dull. It didn't help that some people putting bottles away had just emptied them, and sometimes dropped them into the bags (although breaking glass can be cathartic, a bagful of broken glass is not an ideal cargo). Some of the plastic containers began to smell after a while as well. The one thing we couldn't get rid of was plastic bags, because nowhere accepted them. I ended up re-using them half-a-dozen times, then turning them into bin liners. Other people just stuck them in a drawer (which became unopenable in three weeks).

 

[radamfi]

Councils should be able to make money out of aluminium can recycling. Tesco's recycling centres give you 1 point per 2 cans recycled, which means that they must be making more than 0.5p per can profit.

The Netherlands recycle 64% of their waste, and most of the remaining is incinerated, meaning hardly anything goes to landfill. As with many things, it is simple enough to observe what they do and copy.

 

[Mojo]

Some people are absolute pigs and don't care about recycling, or do it in a cack-handed manner and contaminate the recycling bins by putting non-recyclables in with other recyclables. All too often am I fishing out low-density polyethylene items from the communal recycling bins when I go to dispose of my recycling bin from the flat.

It doesn't help that there is inconsistency with what can be recycled between councils, particularly when it comes to plastics. My current council (Hammersmith/Fulham) will only recycle polyethylene terephthalate and high-density polyethylene, however when I lived in Bristol they will recycle the above, as well as polypropylene and non-expanded polystyrene.

 

[SS4]

In the end I just found it easier to have three bins, one for glass/plastic (the council collects them together), one for paper/card and one for general waste. Come recycling day I can then empty the bins into the ones the council provide and leave them out. The downside is I sound like a right alcoholic when all the glass bottles clank together

Manufacturers have gotten better at making recyclable products but as long as there are two different materials together people will be more inclined to throw them in the bin than strip them apart for recycling.

 

[PaxVobiscum]

It doesn't help that there is inconsistency with what can be recycled between councils, particularly when it comes to plastics. My current council (Hammersmith/Fulham) will only recycle polyethylene terephthalate and high-density polyethylene, however when I lived in Bristol they will recycle the above, as well as polypropylene and non-expanded polystyrene.

Next time you see the lorry, I think you should ask the bin men why they will only recycle polyethylene terephthalate and high-density polyethylene and not polypropylene and non-expanded polystyrene.

(I hope you are a faster runner than I am).

 

[Mojo]

Next time you see the lorry, I think you should ask the bin men why they will only recycle polyethylene terephthalate and high-density polyethylene and not polypropylene and non-expanded polystyrene.

(I hope you are a faster runner than I am).

Funnily enough I've never seen or heard the vehicles which come and collect our refuse and recycling, but the bins always seem to get emptied!

I guess it would be to do with the company which the council sends the recycling to not accepting it. A quick Google search for ''difficulty in recycling polypropylene' does not come up with any technical reason for it being so rare to have a council which does accept polypropylene.

It is a bit of a pain that I have to take my low-density polyethylene to the Supermarket for recycling though. I wish this was collectable as often I end up slinging it in with the rest of the stuff for landfill.

 

[starrymarkb]

Councils should be able to make money out of aluminium can recycling. Tesco's recycling centres give you 1 point per 2 cans recycled, which means that they must be making more than 0.5p per can profit.

The Netherlands recycle 64% of their waste, and most of the remaining is incinerated, meaning hardly anything goes to landfill. As with many things, it is simple enough to observe what they do and copy.

I think Exeter is on the way to that. Recycling here is about 50% with a new Waste to Energy Incinerator under construction on the Marsh Barton Industrial Estate (it's next to the railway)