BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)

Subject: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 05 Feb 07 - 06:31 PM

We've had compulsory recycling in Harrow since last July, so I've been dutifully sorting for brown bin, green bin and green box. All placed in front garden shared with downstairs maisonette, who have their own bins and boxes.

Today I arrived home to find we now have 2 blue bins (alongside green and brown bins)to replace green boxes. Not much room left for front garden, and we have to learn new rules for redistributing waste between brown, green and blue bins.....

Still trying to work out where used tissues should go, sob, sniff....

Kitty

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Feb 07 - 06:41 PM

And it's quite likely that the first thing they do when the stuff gets to the rubbish depot is bung it all in the same place...

The ideas being to get people used to the idea of sorting stuff out, so that when they get properly equipped for recycling it'll be easieer to bring it on line.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 05 Feb 07 - 08:27 PM

Yes, Kevin, I can sympathise with the theory, but it still doesn't leave room for a front garden!

Kitty

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: artbrooks
Date: 05 Feb 07 - 08:42 PM

We (in my part of the US) put newspapers, plastic, corrugated cardboard and metal cans out on the curb, and the city sorts it. We are supposed to take glass to the local drop-off point, where there is a very large metal container with windows labeled "clear", "brown" and "green". Of course, there are no internal dividers in the container......

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 03:59 AM

My black box for glass and blue bag for paper blew away in the wind (it was slack of me to leave it out). Anyway, I replaced the black box with something very similar of my own and they wouldn't take the glass then. I assume this was a health and safety issue because our refuse collectors are very good.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 05:04 AM

As a biologist with a specialisation in ecology, my opinion is that....

Recycling is RUBBISH.


Let me clarify.
The PRINCIPLES of most current RECYCLING SCHEMES are abysmally bad for the environment. The agenda is set by accountants and people whose purpose is to create a financial result and not by anyone who understands how the environment works.
Recycling certain materials makes sense for the environment. Anything which is a NON-RENEWABLE RESOURCE (metals, plastics) should be recycled.

Metals can be melted down and turned into new metal products. If this is not done, raw metal must be mined and eventually the supplies run out.

Plastics are made by the petrochemical industry. In fact most of the oil produced goes into producing plastics. Petrol is essentially a waste product of the plastics industry. I've never understood why, when crude oil prices go up, plastic products remain the same price but petrol prices rocket (and diesel fuel is made from Rape Seed Oil and has never seen an oilfield so shouldn't go up in price at all).
Plastics can be melted down and reprocessed into new plastics. Once the crude oil is gone where will the plastics come from?

Paper comes from fast growing softwood trees (It is NOT made from Tropical Rainforest Hardwoods and has nothing to do with deforestation). Global warming is due to too much carbon dioxide free in the atmosphere. Our battle should be to grow fast growing trees, converting carbon dioxide to cellulose, and then make sure that it is NOT converted back to carbon dioxide.
If you re-pulp paper and turn it into new paper the result is that new trees are not grown and the carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere causing the warming. Re-pulping is the solution of accountants to save cash. The re-pulped paper must be bleached before it becomes useable and so causes pollution problems. It is BAD for the environment and CREATES global Warming. It is not the solution of ecologists.
My personal solution would be to encourage planting of "paper" forests. Convert the wood to paper, encourage business (tax incentives) to make all packaging out of paper/cardboard instead of plastics. Collect the waste paper but then bale it into giant bales, take them out to deep ocean and sink them to the bottom of the sea. Once at the bottom of the sea where it is too cold for them to rot, the carbon will not return as carbon dioxide. In a couple of million years it could be new coal deposits.

Just a small rant.
Quack!
Geoff.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Grab
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 06:10 AM

And it's quite likely that the first thing they do when the stuff gets to the rubbish depot is bung it all in the same place...

Not these days. It costs councils money now to bury landfill. As soon as you hit a council in the pocket, they tend to wake up.

Re paper recycling, I guess it depends what it's being used for. It can certainly take more energy to clean it up into printer/copier-quality paper than to dispose of it. But recycling old paper into cardboard, kitchen rolls and other non-brilliant-white stuff is probably not such a bad thing, is it?

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Cats
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 06:12 AM

We don't have boxes, just plastic bags. They will take all glass, any plastic that is re recyclable, paper, card and tins. We have our own boxes in the garage and it all gets collected fortnightly from kerbsides. We also have a central composting centre if you don't compost at home.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Bee
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 07:05 AM

Geoff, if you could fly over Nova Scotia and see the utter devastation of our softwood forest, you might rethink that opinion. Replanting is mostly done for show, because it still takes too long (30 to 40 years) to grow a softwood tree large enough to be useful for the pulp mills, and at the rate the mills need pulp. As well, single species tree plantings are ecologically barren, as many animals and other plants require mixed age, mixed species forest in which to live and grow. They are also more prone to devastating insect infestation, requiring the spraying of pesticides, and are managed by application of herbicides to keep broadleaved trees from growing among the softwoods.

Paper recycling may not be much of a solution, but perhaps doing it makes people more aware of how much paper they use, and might encourage use reduction, which might be the better goal.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: GUEST,ozchick
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 07:33 AM

oh no.... Geoff - is that true? I am the recycling guru at work - I'm known to be a bit of a tree hugger, am I doing the wrong thing? aaarrrgghhhhh!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 08:16 AM

The only two solutions to the Carbon Dioxide part of the Greenhouse Effect are
1) Stop putting Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere.
2) Remove Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere.

Anything which is CO2 neutral doesn't help the overall picture.
A mature tree in general reaches something resembling a balanced equilibrium as far as CO2 is concerned. It takes it in during the day and breathes it out during the night. Fast growth of young trees takes in considerably more CO2 than it gives out as it is being converted to wood. Any crop does likewise, but many crops are intended to be eaten and therefore are converted very rapidly back into CO2. Wood crops (and some others) lock the CO2 away for a long time so provide more of a solution.

Bee - I do not dispute your point, but the problem again comes down to the planning being done by accountants, who are only concerned with this year's financial profit. We need planning with a long term view. It also needs some coordination and agreement on an international scale. The principle only works if growing new forests is part of the equation.
Similarly, the question of including or leaving intact areas of mixed woodland is one which can be created by governments, either through financial incentives or by legislation. Once again the key is to remove control from the accounts departments.

My main point is that the wrong things are being recycled. Perfectly good glass jars and bottles are smashed so that they can be melted into new glass. They used to be washed out and refilled.
Tin cans are put in landfill because they are not bulky instead of being collected and re-smelted.
Only the items which some accountant thinks will turn a profit are recycled, and sod the environment.
Mind you, since the paperless office was invented they seem to judge results by the tonnage of reports printed off and the stacks of pper records which will never be actually read by anyone.

Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 08:46 AM

My God, If Geoff is a biologist with a specialty in ecology; we are in serious trouble. Fast growing softwood trees take at least forty years to regrow. clear cutting softwood for paper has a devestating impact on the environment, waterways become silted, ground water is affected, wildlife is affected. If you want to see examples of this devestation visit Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. I cannot believe, that as a scientist, you would not be aware of these things.
   As for the rest of your foolishness, well all I can say is..unbelieveable .

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 09:06 AM

It sounds as if we could eventually get fined in the UK if we don't recycle. Also, although the tree planting schemes of softwood can help to improve air quality (I agree with planting more trees) they also can have adverse effects on other parts of the environment. Native species to the UK are not at home in softwood forests and can be discouraged from nesting etc. reducing numbers in areas where there were once more. Everything has to be taken into consideration.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Scrump
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 09:28 AM

What annoys me about recycling is that each local authority seems to have different rules, and people are often not sure what they should recycle, which bin to put it in, etc. Having some sort of national standard for recycling, to be adopted everywhere, would help.

Where I live, we get newspapers and bottles collected, but not cans or plastic. They also collect garden waste with which we are allowed to put up to 25% cardboard. We take cans and certain types of plastic bottles to the supermarket 'banks' where they accept these. Everything else we chuck in the 'rubbish' bin. I'm sure a lot of our neighbours don't bother with cans and plastic and just bung it all in with the other rubbish.

My uncle's collection (in a nearby but different area) has a very different system, that I can't remember the details of now.

At least if everywhere adopted the same system, it would be more likely that people would get it right.

I agree that it would be better to re-use bottles as used to happen (with a deposit charged to encourage re-use), but I guess it would then take a lot of water to clean them properly, and I gather water is something we are short of, in spite of all the rain we get.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 09:41 AM

Where I live we recycle paper, cans, glass, juice containers, cardboard and biodegradable kitchen waste. The programme seems to work very well and the Council reports that nearly 80 % of citizens particpate. As for soft wood forests, well, I have lived with the results of clearcutting and seen firsthand the effects it has. I do not believe that any responsible bioligist would agree that it is harmlss or that dumping waste paper in the ocean is a sane response to rampant over consumption.
   We need to reduce the amount of paper we waste. Each week I get about five pounds of Junk Mail, mainly from places like Wal Mart and Pizza Companies and big box stores. I believe that the cost of delivering all this trash shoul be made prohibitive and that any money collected from it should be donated to ecology groups.
    I do agree that many glass products should be reused and many are, beer bottles are reused. I think that milk companies, pop companies and condiment companies should be made to standardize the bottles so that all of them may be returned and used by any firm.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Bee
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 09:42 AM

Guest 8:46, I was able to say pretty much the same things (if you bothered to read) without insulting Geoff.

Geoff, removing control from the accounting department is a pretty distant solution, as the accounting department is the key to whether we have jobs or not. The problem with legislation is the political slow pace, the corporate stalling and threatening (we'll take the jobs away), and the rejection of science.

I repeat, single species softwood stands, the easiest and most economical option, are not a good solution at all, ever. In fact, tree plantations are IMO the wrong direction entirely. It is in fact a better option to just leave the deforested acreage fallow, including deadfalls and wood trash, which allows a natural mix and succession of plants and trees, and wildlife, to recover the area. The pulp industry doesn't like that because it is more expensive to harvest mixed growth forest.

Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have been subject to all the downsides of the forestry industry - poisonous sprays, broken ecosystems, destroyed waterways, wildlife depletion, and poor air quality.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: mack/misophist
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 10:47 AM

I once worked with a man who had been a tug boar crewman in SF bay during WWII. Recycling was all the rage then. He told me that, starting shortly after 2 am, there was a constant stream of barges going out to dump recycled stuff in the ocean. There was more than they could deal with.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: GUEST,Penny S. (elsewhere)
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 10:56 AM

My father lives in Gloucestershire. I live in Kent. We have different lists of what our councils will collect. so I take spent batteries and aerosols to him, and bring back card and plastic bottles.

We initially had plastic bags for unsorted recycling stuff, then black plastic boxes which we had to leave out open (overnight, regardless of weather), but rumour has it there will be a new wheelie bin for this, and the black box will be for glass. Plastic bags will still be available for blocks of flats. which is good, because it's much easier to go through the home picking up the stuff in the bag, when there is nowhere to put the flipping box.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 11:28 AM

Standardising schemes across the country would just make it too easy for everyone, wouldn't it....

My pet rant is PVC. There is a process, that has been successfully piloted that will take any common plastic that contain no Chlorine (i.e. anything but PVC!), and splits it down to give a consistent product that can be specified to give motor fuel, or feedstocks for various plastics.

It requires oil to be at about $30 a barrel to be economic, and in the UK, an population of a few million nearby to provide a sensible sized supply of recycling. ( I can't remember the exact figures, and they'll vary slightly with a plants efficiency anyway.)

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: dianavan
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 12:31 PM

I have re-cycled for years. Vancouver has a very good system but it is not excellent. I have found that the real solution to an overabundance of waste products is to reduce the amount of packaging that you bring home.

Refuse to buy items that are over packaged. Complain to the shopkeepers about unnecessary plastic. I will often remove the packaging and give it back to the shopkeeper to deal with. At least it makes them think. Stop delivery on unwanted papers and mail. Take a cloth bag to the grocery store. Re-use your empty jars or find someone who can, but most of all, walk whenever you can.

I agree that farming trees for paper is probably a good idea. Forty years is not a very long time and it is beneficial to the environment while they are growing. In the meantime, recycling paper is the best solution we have. Clear-cutting must stop. Perhaps an alternative to bleaching can be found.

As far as garden space - We have two bags that fit into a blue box. It doesn't take much room. The bags are for 1) newspaper 2) all other paper products without plastic or wax. The box is for plastic and glass which is sorted at the place of delivery.

One box is not much space, considering the benefits to the environment. Sacrifices must be made and we all have to do our part.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Scoville
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 01:18 PM

We recycle but we drive to the next town over twice a month and lie about our address to do it (our town does not have recycling). We have to sort everything ourselves.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: Bee
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 02:18 PM

We sort: bluebag contains cans, plastic, glass, plastic bags. Egg cartons and newspapers are in seperate grocery bags. The municipality has an individual compost bin program that takes all food waste, including meat, fish, oil, vegies. They sell the compost back to the community. We also do our own composting, so not much goes into our municipal bin. I put meat and fish scraps out in the morning on a high boulder, and the crows come for it, without fail, in less than an hour.

I do get annoyed at the time it takes, and I'm not sold on the fact we must use water to rinse the cans and bottles. All drink bottles, plastic or glass, have a deposit fee, we get half it back when we turn them in.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue bin blues (recycling UK)
From: HuwG
Date: 06 Feb 07 - 03:00 PM

You can indeed be fined for failing to recycle in Britain. First and most widely publicised case was a man who was just leaving his house when he bumped into the postman, who handed him a fistful of mail which proved to be entirely junk mail. With a curse, he stuffed it into a council litter bin nearby. Within a few days he was prosecuted for placing non-recyclable waste (the plastic see-through windows on the envelopes) into a recyclable-waste only receptacle. He collected a £50 fine and now has a criminal record.

I have to suffer the attentions of anyone who decides to lean over my garden wall (I say garden; it barely qualifies as a window box) and dump the rubbish from a nearby KFC outlet into my bins. If they succeed in placing so much as a plastic bottle top into my green bin, the dustmen refuse to empty it, leaving me with a stuffy note requiring me to remove the offending item myself.

(The council also objected when recent gales blew my wheelie bin to the bottom of the hill on which I live, leaving a spectacular paper trail behind it. I wrote back with an equally cross later informing them that they were negligent in failing to grit the street until three days after recent snowfalls. No doubt my letter will go straight into the recyclable-rubbish only bin, but I felt better for writing it.)