Recycling what's the point?

scottishchick27

Mankysteve wrote: »

Are you not already on Bi weekly bin collection? If not I suspect that you will be very soon as most concil are going that way those that don't recycle will be forced too otherwise they'll have to be making trips to the tip to get rid of their rubbish.

I take it you mean bi-monthly? as in twice a month rather than twice a week?

MothballsWallet

Bi-monthly means every 2 months.
Bi-weekly means every 2 weeks.

Nick_C

Begging your pardon moonrakerz, but do you actually work in the business? I do, and if you do you should know where to look for current commodity prices, and not rely on a newspaper article that is a year out of date.

I presume your £45 a tonne for landfill is a gate fee? Landfill tax alone is currently £40 a tonne, and will increase to £48 a tonne in April 2010. This is on top of gate fees and transportation. £90 a tonne was a ballpark figure for disposal costs.

News & PAMS; latest published merchant prices are £20-£25 per tonne. Export prices are £65 - £70.

"Tin" cans are made from either steel (food) or aluminium (beverages). Scrap steel in December was £70 to £80 a tonne. Aluminium UBCs (used beverage containers) are currently selling at £550 to £600 loose, or £600 to £650 baled.

Maybe you can't give steel cans away, but we can sell them!

On the general principle though, regardless of current commodity prices, it is surely better to sell recyclable material and generate an income than it is to pay to burn or bury it? You have to pay to collect household waste regardless of what you then do with it.

Recycling has made good economic sense for a very long time. Growing up in Bridlington in the 1970s, our local council collected newspapers in a trailer attached to the dustcart, and many charities collected (aluminium) milk bottle tops and clean used kitchen foil. This was before anyone had heard of climate change or global warming, and in a time when most people could not spell "environment" (many still can't).

As we also used to say in Yorkshire, "where there's muck, there's brass".

If you care about money saving, please keep recycling - your Council is spending your money. If you are a follower of the new Faith of Environmentalism, then you will anyway.

MickMun

moonrakerz wrote: »

AND the costs of collecting for recycling are much the same as for land fill !!! To be blunt recycling is NOT economical good sense ! Spend £90/£45 a tonne for something to sell at £25 a tonne ??

As with many "green" figures that are bandied around there are huge variations - one side uses the figures that support them, the other side doesn't.

Lies, damned lies and statistics !!

Assuming your figures are true and there is a loss by recycling - you are still not considering the cost that would be incurred to produce another "fresh" tonne of the material from raw sources.
Im pretty sure once you factor that cost in you will see the benefits.

moonrakerz

Nick_C wrote: »

Begging your pardon moonrakerz, but do you actually work in the business? I do, and if you do you should know where to look for current commodity prices, and not rely on a newspaper article that is a year out of date.

I presume your £45 a tonne for landfill is a gate fee? Landfill tax alone is currently £40 a tonne, and will increase to £48 a tonne in April 2010. This is on top of gate fees and transportation. £90 a tonne was a ballpark figure for disposal costs.

News & PAMS; latest published merchant prices are £20-£25 per tonne. Export prices are £65 - £70.

"Tin" cans are made from either steel (food) or aluminium (beverages). Scrap steel in December was £70 to £80 a tonne. Aluminium UBCs (used beverage containers) are currently selling at £550 to £600 loose, or £600 to £650 baled.

Maybe you can't give steel cans away, but we can sell them!

On the general principle though, regardless of current commodity prices, it is surely better to sell recyclable material and generate an income than it is to pay to burn or bury it? You have to pay to collect household waste regardless of what you then do with it.

Recycling has made good economic sense for a very long time. Growing up in Bridlington in the 1970s, our local council collected newspapers in a trailer attached to the dustcart, and many charities collected (aluminium) milk bottle tops and clean used kitchen foil. This was before anyone had heard of climate change or global warming, and in a time when most people could not spell "environment" (many still can't).

As we also used to say in Yorkshire, "where there's muck, there's brass".

If you care about money saving, please keep recycling - your Council is spending your money. If you are a follower of the new Faith of Environmentalism, then you will anyway.

I DO NOT "work in the business" as you so succinctly put it - I AM INDEPENDENT !

The figures I quoted came from a respectable (left wing even !) newspaper - I posted them purely to show that in so many areas the general public is fed a diet of exaggeration and hyperbole by "those in the business" (of protecting their jobs ??)
These figures show that for every argument put forward FOR a particular case there are plenty of equally valid counter arguments, which those "in the business" try and pooh-pooh - usually resorting to personal denigration. This was exemplified by a "lady" on the radio a couple of days back who called sceptics (DENIERS - no less) on man-made global warming: "uneducated" !

PS: I suggest you check the price of steel cans - when I said YOU, I meant YOU !

biscit

Money_maker wrote: »

As a householder, I only recycle for environmental reasons - never economic.
How much money would it take to restore all the polar ice caps?

True enough, but climate change and the ice caps are not the be-all and end all of the environment. There's the countries being mined to within an inch of their lives to provide new raw materials for our tin cans, plastic bottles etc. The rain forrests were high on the agenda with respect to biodiversity, this is all tied in to our use of resources.

Global warming is, as you rightly say, an important issue, but it is far from being the only environmental reason to recycle, let alone the only reason.

Nick_C

moonrakerz wrote: »

I DO NOT "work in the business" as you so succinctly put it - I AM INDEPENDENT !

The figures I quoted came from a respectable (left wing even !) newspaper - I posted them purely to show that in so many areas the general public is fed a diet of exaggeration and hyperbole by "those in the business" (of protecting their jobs ??)
These figures show that for every argument put forward FOR a particular case there are plenty of equally valid counter arguments, which those "in the business" try and pooh-pooh - usually resorting to personal denigration. This was exemplified by a "lady" on the radio a couple of days back who called sceptics (DENIERS - no less) on man-made global warming: "uneducated" !

PS: I suggest you check the price of steel cans - when I said YOU, I meant YOU !

I think what you've shown is (1) you can't always believe everything you read in the papers and (2) data can become out of date vary quickly