Recycling - thoughts

Ben84

Norman_Castle wrote: »

From Freecycle recently

OFFER: 1000+used supermarket carrier bags I have collected 1000+ carrier bags over the last couple of years from
various trips to the supermarket. Could be us full to carbooter etc if
you want , must be collected by Sunday night or will be put out with
the recyling,

Why not just reuse them. Surely when heading towards having 1000+ plastic bags they would realise how wasteful they are. At least they are trying to recycle them, or possibly have no room left in their bin. Bring on the plastic bag tax.

A number of the big supermarkets do have incentives to reuse bags. Sainsburys give me I think 0.5p for every bag I reuse (as nectar points). However, directly charging when people use them rather than reimbursing when people reuse them, might make the scheme more obvious and more popular. There are however a lot of people who will just buy a new bag every time. Couple of my friends I live with go to the local co-op around the corner and buy a new bag every time, walk three minutes home with the shopping and throw it away. I do have a pile of bags in the draw I've told them they're welcome to reuse, but they never do. I guess they don't think saving 4p is worth it.

Norman_Castle

"Sainsburys give me I think 0.5p for every bag I reuse (as nectar points). "

I got told off at the self service tills for saying I used two bags instead of one .
Every little helps, or is that Tesco.

Ben84

grahamc2003 wrote: »

I'm always amazed at the amount of food which is reported as wasted - around 30% iirc. It certainly isn't from us, where practically no food is thrown out. Apparently some people throw out food once it's near it's sell by date, which to my mind is madness (and obscene imv).

Nor does it come from my kitchen as I do eat almost everything I buy. However, a fair bit of the waste is made on our behalf by the shops. The constant availability of nearly every food item you could want results in shops always having to be over stocked.

grahamc2003 wrote: »

Anything not edible by us either goes to our dog or to our chickens to be recycled as eggs. I must put a word in for these 'kitchen caddy' things, for vegetable waste like coiffee grounds and potato peelings etc. I was dubious as to their smellyness at first, but having used one for 2 years now (for veg waste as an interim step before it goes in the compost bin) I'd say there's no smell at all. Gets a little gunky and messy inside, but no smells on the outside, so fine for the kitchen.

I'm not really motivated by 'green' reasons, just seems sensible to make compost and eggs from waste, and also minimise waste production anyhow. Any cardboard and paper (and old books too far gone to give to charity shops) get burnt in the woodburner. Usually our normal waste bins just have food wrapping/ expanded polystyrene from box packaging.

The obvious problem with disposable things is that you buy them and shortly after throw them away. It costs money to make all this stuff that ends up in the bin, so I prefer to not buy 'rubbish' as I see it.

grahamc2003 wrote: »

What gets my goat is food packaging which all supermarkets are guilty of, hoiwever 'green' their claims. Pizzas seem more multi layered packaging than pizza - just one example. I occasionally like a Big Mac (horror of horrors) - but the amount of bulky packing to allow me plus 4 others to carry it 5 yards is simply perverse - but I expect there may be health and safety regs which force the situation (are there?). Mutliply that by how many burgers are sold each day and the stupidity and waste are immense.

The huge majority of waste could be designed out or massively reduced from the start with most products. I thought this morning while having a bath, shampoo is mostly water and people tend to over-use it anyway. Why not double concentrate it (or more if possible?) and put it in pump bottles that dispense a measured amount with guidelines on the packet so that people use the right amount. At minimum the packaging waste would halve, more where it encourages people to use the right amount, and there would be less detergent needing to be made and cleaned up in the waste water too. No need to send a fleet of expensive energy consuming recycling services around to gather up the old poorly designed shampoo bottles either, we could make far greater savings by just no making and distributing them in the first place. Saves on the number of lorries delivering the product too and probably makes for smaller factories and shops to make and display it too. Problem is, shampoo companies aren't in the market to clean people's hair as efficiently as possible, they're there to make as much money as possible from cleaning people's hair and making longer lasting products that encourage moderate use doesn't make business sense.

EricMears

Ben84 wrote: »

Why not double concentrate it (or more if possible?) and put it in pump bottles that dispense a measured amount with guidelines on the packet so that people use the right amount.

You'd have to include the dispensing system - and probably every time rather than offering a 'refill' with no pump.

Left alone, people tend to use far too much washing up liquid, fabric softener etc. Perhaps I'm just mean but I find that if most of these products are diluted 50/50 (sometimes more) our dishes get just as clean and clothes as soft but the stuff lasts longer.

EricMears

Ben84 wrote: »

Building heavy structures on them might be a challenge however.

Not really, build your house on a 'raft' or office blocks with 'deep piles' and you can pretty well build anything anywhere.

Valli

EricMears wrote: »

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 !

as a blue bin owner (borough;)
honestly?
the black bin stuff AND the green bin stuff go to landfill?

anyway
this amused me

recently had a new kitchen and, therefore, a skip. Kitchen fitter added his waste from laying a patio to my skip - pieces of slab/stone. NDN came round and asked if I had any rubble in my skip and took the fitter's stone waste out as he need some hardcore for a greenhouse base! Nett result - no stone in the landfill!

Ben84

EricMears wrote: »

You'd have to include the dispensing system - and probably every time rather than offering a 'refill' with no pump.

Why sell any bottle with a pump already in it? Most people should already have one, so why assume it's needed as default every time. Just sell bottles and let people buy the extra pump if they need one. Retailers and manufacturers are increasingly insisting that products are only sold as groups of items, sometimes meaning the only way to obtain one small cheap item is to buy it with a larger expensive item you don't really want. Happens on a small scale and on a large scale with everything from detergent pumps to car parts. Certainly profitable for them in making more stuff sell and simplifying distribution chains, but it's still just making people buy stuff they don't need.

EricMears

Valli wrote: »

as a blue bin owner (borough;)
honestly?
the black bin stuff AND the green bin stuff go to landfill?

Certainly do. Erin Void to be precise. Follow your bin lorry two weeks running if you want confirmation.

You may be aware that DCC have been trying for several years now to build a compost plant. First at Glapwell, then within Grassmoor Country Park and currently at the proposed Arkwright Colliery Country Park. Latest scheme is still awaiting a Judicial Review decision.

Meanwhile, Markham Vale Industrial Estate - promoted as going to provide five thousand new jobs has delivered less than one hundred with a further one hundred and twenty possibly to be added later this year. It has several hundred acres of free space, stands right at a motorway junction (M1 29a) and is presently being crossed by every black or green collection lorry en route to the landfill site. But DCC want to send traffic down a small country lane that's already heavily congested when used as a rat-run between two motorway junctions and has had several fatal accidents in the last few years.

If you saw that sort of plot in a TV sitcom you'd dismiss it as beyond the realms of possibility !

Compare that situation with East Sussex. Black & green collections both go to the same place (the former Blue Circle Cement works at Asham) but black contents go one side of the road to backfill the old chalk quarry and green stuffis composted on the other side of the road.

EricMears

Ben84 wrote: »

Why sell any bottle with a pump already in it?

It's my belief that without a fixed dispensing system, people will use far too much of the product. Perhaps we could compromise on some sort of refill bottle where it's not possible to extract contents without the appropriate pump ?

grahamc2003

Ben84 wrote: »

The huge majority of waste could be designed out or massively reduced from the start with most products. I thought this morning while having a bath, shampoo is mostly water and people tend to over-use it anyway. Why not double concentrate it (or more if possible?) and put it in pump bottles that dispense a measured amount with guidelines on the packet so that people use the right amount. At minimum the packaging waste would halve, more where it encourages people to use the right amount, and there would be less detergent needing to be made and cleaned up in the waste water too. No need to send a fleet of expensive energy consuming recycling services around to gather up the old poorly designed shampoo bottles either, we could make far greater savings by just no making and distributing them in the first place. Saves on the number of lorries delivering the product too and probably makes for smaller factories and shops to make and display it too. Problem is, shampoo companies aren't in the market to clean people's hair as efficiently as possible, they're there to make as much money as possible from cleaning people's hair and making longer lasting products that encourage moderate use doesn't make business sense.

A lot of common sense there.

Part of the problem is that profit maximising businesses (all of them, however 'environmental they claim to be) can use the green card very successfully to increase profits irrespective of the underlying environmental benefits behind their marketing. I'm sure 'made from recycled paper' or 'made with recycled glass' aren't as environmentally beneficial as the impression those phrases conjure up. I'm afraid I believe most 'recycling' is greenwash, at least compared to the effect of not using the product or its container, or, as you say, not delivering the product with lots of water needlessly added during manufacture which can easily be added at home. (The ultimate is bottled water, many of which wouldn't pass the H&S standards to be allowed out our taps! All that glass, transport etc etc just for a glass of water brimming with impurities).

Surely in 20 years, looking on our disposable glass bottles use today(even if made from highly energy intensive recycled glass), people will be astounded at the madness of it all. I like the system in France for buying wine, where you supply any old clean bottle, and they fill it from a massive vat - perhaps we should do something similar for all things which are mainly water and can't be produced in a concentrated form.

On a broader note, I think what's missing from most of this environmental stuff is any scientific analysis on the efficacy of the many things claiming to be 'good for the environment' and suchlike. For example, who knows whether, overall, recycling plastic milk bottles is beneficial or not compared to burying them, once all factors are considered. Or using glass instead of plastic for milk and recycling those? Such discussions are mainly opinion or based on bias rather than scientifically based (simply because I don't think the scientific evidence exists). And that allows business to exploit the opportunity for profit by manipulating the opinion and bias.