What Carbon Naughty Things do you do

mark55man

Ben84 wrote: »

I'm not against recycling, the potential to save resources and protect the environment is there and can in some cases be realised. It's more domestic recycling that I'm unconvinced by because I don't believe the numbers add up in favour of it.

My opinion changed a lot when I realised just how little of what goes in to landfills is actually domestic waste. Although a lot of numbers about waste are presented, often in ways that try to shock us, the domestic contribution is generally never quantified. It's about 8-9% according to DEFRA however, which raises the question of why so much effort is going in to domestic recycling. It is not a leading source of waste in the UK and with it being one of the most contaminated, diverse and widely distributed waste streams with heavy overheads to collecting, sorting and processing, it isn't even a good place to start, let alone put the majority of our efforts.

The issue is political perhaps. Recycling has become popular and councils and politicians who support it are in turn popular with the public. There's a business aspect too, it is very profitable for some companies. The recyclables aren't worth a lot, but the contracts to collect them are. Companies who are now under pressure to do environmental work are also targeting waste areas that customers see, which generally feeds the idea domestic waste is a major waste stream and environmental danger. It has become a self perpetuating situation with the environmental costs of domestic waste getting exaggerated.

Of course it's good practice to cut back on how much and how quickly we turn resources in to landfill, but the numbers have to add up. We are buying a service when the local council pay for recycling, the aim of which is protecting the environment, but I'm leaning mostly towards domestic recycling being too expensive and doing too little. We could just as easily spend the money on wildlife reserves or better public transport subsidies to cut energy use and traffic pollution in cities.

We wouldn't have to give up on reducing domestic waste either. The idea costly recycling programs are the only solution is mistaken. There are some projects aiming to lightweight packaging and reduce the mass of waste per product. It's entirely possible for light weight, low mass plastic packaging to replace a lot of bulky energy intensive packages we currently use. The plastic coffee refills are a perfect example. Pushing lots of resources through households is not as effective as just using minimal packaging. A greater emphasis on reusable items (tax breaks perhaps?) and longer warranties on consumer goods would help too.

Ben - as I said at the top I have started a blog with my green journey - do you mind if I use your idea and some/most of the words (I will add some of my own research), but I don't think I have seen anything that more precisely sums up my concerns

Ben84

mark88man wrote: »

Ben - as I said at the top I have started a blog with my green journey - do you mind if I use your idea and some/most of the words (I will add some of my own research), but I don't think I have seen anything that more precisely sums up my concerns

Please do use anything from my post that you want to.

LindaJane47

great thread

carbon goodies:
I recycle religiously and always have done, though I absolutley agree with above posters that it could sometimes be more political than environmental..... I collect waste newspaper and all kitchen waste from 3 of our neighbours as well to feed my compost bins
driving - I drive maybe 3000 miles a year which is pretty low really.... about 2/3 of which is to visit family some distance away (train would cost me £75!!!) I walk to one of my jobs, and do little mileage for my other (self employed) job.
Always turn the lights off and never leave anything on standby (though our lodger does )
bought energy efficient appliances when they needed replacing
shopping - I only buy stuff I really need (oh, except that cute little MP3 player I just had to have ....) often buy second hand, pass stuff on via freegle, etc

Carbon naughties
Driving - our car is a 2l diesel might buy something smaller when we need to replace it
flying - I didn't fly for 12 years for environmental reasons.... however, for last 3 years I have flown twice a year, to Europe. I have considered the train but it is way too expensive and takes WAY too long. Certainly if I were going to France, I would go on the train though
Meat - used to be Vegan, now want meat at least 7 times a week Figure I've done my bit on that score

anything else? Sure there would be ....

Linda

Ben84

LindaJane47 wrote: »

I recycle religiously and always have done, though I absolutley agree with above posters that it could sometimes be more political than environmental..... I collect waste newspaper and all kitchen waste from 3 of our neighbours as well to feed my compost bins

This is interesting because I would say that recycling and composting are very separate things. The main thing is that composting does not have the many negatives of domestic recycling, there are almost no overheads, no collection and sorting costs, people simply put some of their waste in to the compost bin in their garden. A good percentage of the average household waste can be composted and it comes with almost no environmental costs to do this, so I would say the maths are strongly in favour of composting.

New bioplastics may make composting a greater range of waste possible in the future, offering a low cost and low resource option for their disposal.

Any kind of waste that can be turned in to something else by the household that owns it may be worth exploring too. There are various web sites about turning rubbish in to useful items, but designers could make items that have greater potential for reuse.

We have a lot of options for domestic waste that don't inevitably lead towards costly and resource intensive recycling programs. Composting is a very strong alternative.