Recycling Ideas which could catch on?

EricMears

antrobus wrote: »

Not worth the effort, eh?

http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=16130&title=Tesco+cuts+down+recycling+rewards+scheme+following+%27misuse%27

That referred to a small, localised trial of giving reward points for anything put into machine.

Our local store (and vast majority of others) only ever gave 1 point for 2 Al cans and the trials sites seem to be reverting to that.

But even if you did manage to pick up a hundred or two of unearned points, you wouldn't exactly get rich by doing so ! Each point is worth about a penny or can sometimes be doubled if you use them in particular ways. An international gang member generally tries to earn more than a couple of ponds an hour.

Norman_Castle

People who don't recycle increase everyones council tax http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16812103

Ben84

antrobus wrote: »

If that were true, that would undermine the whole point the OP was trying to make, as in " So why aren't we getting cash for metal, etc?" Besides, I wouldn't necessarily take much notice of FoE's views on the economics of recycling. If there wasn't any money in recycling then Tesco would hardly be so keen on doing it, now would they?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390086/Greedy-Tesco-ordering-councils-remove-recycling-bins-car-parks-supermarket-cash-in.html

It would undermine the whole point, which is why I mentioned it. Being paid for something that costs local councils wouldn't make much sense really.

As for Tesco, they don't provide domestic recycling services like the council do, so they don't pay to issue thousands of households with special bins or a lorry to travel all over the city every week or two, which needs maintenance, fuel and staff. Nor do they have a sorting facility. The customers do all of that for them. They just provide space, a container to collect it and ask a scrap material dealer to pick it up. Recycling services also attract a certain type of customer, so they may have some incentives outside the profit from the materials being recycled in offering it.

Ben84

Norman_Castle wrote: »

People who don't recycle increase everyones council tax http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16812103

How much someone recycles isn't inevitably linked to how much they landfill things however. There are households who don't recycle and still throw out less rubbish than average (we're one of them, it now takes us months to fill the bin up, although we did used to throw out more).

kittycatface

interesting thread op. i am one of the silly people that bothers to recycle aluminium cans at the tesco on my way to work. Profit made since June is just over £1, not sure how much petrol I'm using going round that extra corner once a month!

Consumers are not being encouraged to re-use as we used to be when environmentally friendly-ism first came into fashion in early 90s. Instead being green becomes another opportunity to buy or gain something: I am a total hypocrite with tesco and cans, but all my plastic yog pots have become flower pots this year!

It might be interesting to put in a Freedom of Information request to local councils to find out:
a) how much they are paying for their recycling contract to massive multinationals such as Veolia
b) how much they make in profit annually from recycling higher value items such as metals
c) how much of that profit if any is reinvested into either improving the recycling contracts or in other green initiatives
d) how much it costs them to change contracts with recycling providers. My experience at another council was that it would cost hundreds of thousands in legal fees to alter 5yr contracts for waste disposal, so that the council could change the type of collection from weekly to fortnightly only a year after they fist set it up

I think we will find that there might be a tidy sum going to someone other than local authorities or the hard-recycling public!

Some councils have been in discussions for years about rewarding recyclers with cinema tickets etc according to the volume they recycle but there are concerns about that promoting an increase in packaging usage.