Recycling and public incompetence

IvanOpinion

talksalot81 wrote:

We are under this new regime as well.... it actually is a problem.

I have mentioned elsewhere our own personal issue and it boils down to the fact that we have a large household of adults with the additional problem that we do alot of shopping online.

What we are to do with the online packaging, well i dont know! We cant put it in for recycling because it is very frequently corrugated or is jiffy bags with paper and plastic bonded together. In some ways, we could be considered to save the environment by not driving into town, but then are caught out later.

In the end of the day, if it becomes difficult for people to have enough space in the bins, one thing will happen.... recycling will be forgotten. If I have to spend time running to the local dump with rubbish the council wont pick up, then I may not have that time to spend recycling. And contrary to what some people say, it is not necessarily trivial. We have perhaps 5 bins through our house, in order for everyone to recycle, we would need everyone to have 2 bins else we would need to have someone pick through each bin as it was about to be emptied into the main wheely bin.... If you have one bin in your whole house, yes, it is simple. But that just isnt always the case.

Just be aware that they may soon be weighing the amount of rubbish you are generating and you (or your entire neighbourhood) may have to pay heavy fines if you are not recycling enough (or generating too much rubbish - not sure which way it will work). And these fines are on top of those that we will be paying in 2010 for not meeting EU targets (one estimate I saw was an expected £180 onto your rates bill ... just to cover the EU fines .. not to worry about the additional fines if we do not meet the 2013 targets).

There is a certain inevitability about it all!!!

Ivan

IvanOpinion

NAR wrote:

That would require someone working in the Council waste disposal department to have a brain cell! :rolleyes:

Now thats not nice .. they do have one .. its just that the person that has the brain cell is on holiday at the minute and he locked it in his drawer before he went.

ivan

Mr_Skint_2

Iv'e always wondered how much would have to be recycled to
pay for the cost of production and materials to make a green wheelie bin.

NAR

Can shredded paper go in a blue bin? And if not, does anyone know why?

MORPH3US

Councils should charge people by the amount of the rubbish that they create.

Recycleable stuff should be taken away free and then anything else, people have to pay for by weight. Ok, might not be easy to put into reality, but in an ideal world, thats the way it should work!!!

On a separate note, I work in a bar a couple of nights a week and all the rubbish goes right in the bin. You can probably imagine, in a bar, 99% of the rubbish is glass bottles, plastic bottles and aluminium cans. what a waste throwing all that recycleable stuff in the bin. I contacted people about this and they all passed the buck!!

I HATE WASTE!!!

M

Mr_Skint_2

MORPH3US wrote:

Councils should charge people by the amount of the rubbish that they create.

Recycleable stuff should be taken away free and then anything else, people have to pay for by weight. Ok, might not be easy to put into reality, but in an ideal world, thats the way it should work!!!

I HATE WASTE!!!

M

This would never work as people would fill eachothers bins :rolleyes:

Also when I worked at my local recycling depot for about a month
all the collected glass would be put on a bin wagon and taken to a landfill.

Dont believe the hype about re-cylcing they bury a lot of it anyway.

thetope

Mr_Skint wrote:

This would never work as people would fill eachothers bins :rolleyes:

Also when I worked at my local recycling depot for about a month
all the collected glass would be put on a bin wagon and taken to a landfill.

Dont believe the hype about re!cylcing they bury a lot of it anyway.

Bryson House (who deal with the recycling in NI) DO recycle something like 97% of the material recovered from the recycle bins/kerbies. the remaining ~3% is material that is unsuitable for recycling and has been put in by the householder's error. Bryson House does not landfill ANY of the recyclables.

shredded paper can't be recycled currently in NI because shredding cuts the fibres in the paper and makes it unsuitable for recycling by the current methods used here. what i do with my bank statements, bills etc is tear the personal information off the top and recycle the bottom bit. that way it's secure and at least some of it gets recycled.

talksalot81

IvanOpinion wrote:

Just be aware that they may soon be weighing the amount of rubbish you are generating and you (or your entire neighbourhood) may have to pay heavy fines if you are not recycling enough (or generating too much rubbish ! not sure which way it will work). And these fines are on top of those that we will be paying in 2010 for not meeting EU targets (one estimate I saw was an expected £180 onto your rates bill ... just to cover the EU fines .. not to worry about the additional fines if we do not meet the 2013 targets).

There is a certain inevitability about it all!!!

Ivan

They would thus need to provide me evidence of their study into the amount of rubbish produced for a standard person. They would then need to prove that it was fair to 'standardise' and that there were not significant examples contrary to the rule (vegetarians for instance). I would also need them to provide details on how this will all vary for age groups. Just for starters.

Then to recycling, for starters I would need them to provide evidence of research again into who produces what recyclebles and whether it is again fair to standardise. It would then be nice to see if the figures they suggest for recycling, waste and overall production match up, or if they are just made up.

Then I would like them to show evidence that they are accounting for the fact that this is a large family home and that they are allowing for that in their calculations. If they did so and still we did not fit the figures, I would like them to show evidence that all those members accounted for, actually should have been. As a working family, it is very common that individuals are just not present.

I suggest that the council gets started on this research as I am confident most of it will not have been done. And no, as a scientist, I do not accept civil service reports which make no consideration for statistics or correct scientific technique.

If the above was not available to me, a fine could be argued without difficulty and my response to them would be that if they continue irrelevant, I will be billing them for my time.

IvanOpinion

talksalot81 wrote:

They would thus need to provide me evidence of their study into the amount of rubbish produced for a standard person. They would then need to prove that it was fair to 'standardise' and that there were not significant examples contrary to the rule (vegetarians for instance). I would also need them to provide details on how this will all vary for age groups. Just for starters.

Then to recycling, for starters I would need them to provide evidence of research again into who produces what recyclebles and whether it is again fair to standardise. It would then be nice to see if the figures they suggest for recycling, waste and overall production match up, or if they are just made up.

Then I would like them to show evidence that they are accounting for the fact that this is a large family home and that they are allowing for that in their calculations. If they did so and still we did not fit the figures, I would like them to show evidence that all those members accounted for, actually should have been. As a working family, it is very common that individuals are just not present.

I suggest that the council gets started on this research as I am confident most of it will not have been done. And no, as a scientist, I do not accept civil service reports which make no consideration for statistics or correct scientific technique.

If the above was not available to me, a fine could be argued without difficulty and my response to them would be that if they continue irrelevant, I will be billing them for my time.

Unfortunately talksalot it is coming whether or not we like it .. just like water charges, doubling of rates and speeding tickets. The bin weighing is currently undergoing trials in Ballymena and we can all point to the exclusions we should have however it looks like in the future we will have to take responsibility for the amount of waste we are generating .. and as usual it will probably be about one third of the population paying for everybody.

I have not yet heard how it is going to work though. I don't know if the intention is weigh the amount recycled (therby allowing councils to prove how much they are sending to recycle (whcih often ends up in landfill ayway)); or is it the amount of non!recyclable waste; I don't know if it could end up being a per household or per community charge ! so next time you see your neighbour leaving out 2!3 jammed pack solid bins ... just remember in another couple of years you could end up paying for their wasteage.

I get the impression though that the fines may be at council level therefore all they will do is build the necessary monies into the rates.

Ivan

leftieM

I have read on the Belfast City Council website that shredded paper can be put in the brown bin for composting.