Recycling - thoughts

Gettingtherequickly

This is not what it immediately appears, I recycle as much as I can, but I would be interested in what others think about this scenario.

I have family living in Egypt and it horrifies when we go shopping that it is accepted as the norm not to use as few bags as possible, especially as I use jute bags, so when you consider the population, that is a serious amount of bags.

On the other hand, there is very little wastage, ie as much as possible is reused, eg for some reason, cheese can be purchased sliced in polystyrene trays, these are washed, stored and used for other purposes eg, nipping into the neighbours with some cake you have made, or ice cream tubs, same thing.

The plastic bags themselves are used for rubbish.

It is really obvious how much is re-used when there is no bin collection for holiday periods. There is a single bin for hundreds of families but unlike here, although there is obviously extra rubbish for the period, it is nothing like here.

So my question is, I suppose, do we forgive them for all of the extra bags because of all of the recycling they actually do?

tru

Yes

People here (not all, I know) will use jute bags/bags for life, then buy a roll of binliners without a second thought. Might as well save your money twice - don't buy reusables in the first place, use the free carriers, then save money on binliners by using the freebies.

Mrs_Arcanum

tru wrote: »

Yes

People here (not all, I know) will use jute bags/bags for life, then buy a roll of binliners without a second thought. Might as well save your money twice - don't buy reusables in the first place, use the free carriers, then save money on binliners by using the freebies.

Or even better buy the Co-op compostable carrier bags which you know will not be stuck in landfill forever.

DundeeDoll

I think it all goes to show it's not as simple as some people make out. I was amazed at how many times a paper bag needs to be reused to be as efficient re. energy to make it as a plastic bag. But against this is how you dispose of the darn things. One thing I have definitely noticed since going OS - the amount we throw out, recyclable and land fill, has really gone down. There are still improvements I would like to make, but it's a start.

chocoholic_chick

We try to recycle as much as we can, we are now on a 2 weekly cycle for recycling and our normal rubbish bin, our recycle bin is normally completely full by the time thats due to be emptied, whereas our normal rubbish bin is sometimes only half full after 2 weeks. I just think the amount of packaging food and other items comes in is ridiculous and get frustrated that when we do our food shopping online they use a ridiculous amount of bags ( order 3 bottles of juice, they'll each be in a seperate bag! ).

jackel

.tru - not all bin liners are used as bin liners(well not at first) I buy them to wrap our home made bread in for freezing and only when they are worn out use them as bin liners

blackandwhitebunny

Gettingtherequickly wrote: »

I have family living in Egypt and it horrifies when we go shopping that it is accepted as the norm not to use as few bags as possible, especially as I use jute bags, so when you consider the population, that is a serious amount of bags.

On the other hand, there is very little wastage, ie as much as possible is reused, eg for some reason, cheese can be purchased sliced in polystyrene trays, these are washed, stored and used for other purposes eg, nipping into the neighbours with some cake you have made, or ice cream tubs, same thing.

The plastic bags themselves are used for rubbish.

My experience of Eqypt in the last few years has been huge loads of litter. When we first visited many years ago, soft drinks were still sold in the old glass bottles with a deposit on them and drinking water in many places was from a water dispenser rather than in bottles.
Last time we were there everything had changed to plastic bottles and they were everywhere, as were plastic bags etc.

tru

Do the carrier bags compost when they're buried? I read that they only break down in sunlight and will last as long as a normal carrier when they're buried. I can't find a definitive answer.

jackyann

I go for the existential method - I use cotton bags that I make myself most of the time, and wrap rubbish in newspaper.
When I forget to take my bags, I gleefully take plastic ones, then re-use them in many of the ways described, including sometimes for messy rubbish.
It saves brain cells - and mine need conserving!

Pink.

Hi Gettingtherequickly,

We have a Green and Ethical board where you should get more replies so I've moved your thread over there.

Pink

EricMears

chocoholic_chick wrote: »

We try to recycle as much as we can, we are now on a 2 weekly cycle for recycling and our normal rubbish bin, our recycle bin is normally completely full by the time thats due to be emptied, whereas our normal rubbish bin is sometimes only half full after 2 weeks. I just think the amount of packaging food and other items comes in is ridiculous and get frustrated that when we do our food shopping online they use a ridiculous amount of bags ( order 3 bottles of juice, they'll each be in a seperate bag! ).

Situation fairly similar here :-

Black bin ('household waste') emptied by council once a fortnight.
Green bin (compostable material) empied by council same time on the 'other week'.
Burgundy bin (recyclable) emptied by contarctor once a fortnight.

However, it gets silly.

The black bin and green bin contents both go to the same landfill site ! Derbyshire county council have been thinking about building a composting plant for last five years but instead of doing that on an industrial estate (where they have acres of empty space) they've been trying to build it on a series of country parks - and keep expressing surprise when residents object !

Our buRrgundy bin is broadly equivalent to the blue bin in the neighbouring borough but doesn't accept some grades of plastic that theirs does. We therefore have to dispose of yoghourt pots etc in ma-in-lws blue bin rather than our burgundy one !