My war on waste!!!

[Deleted User]

We have one large green top wheelie bin for recycling and in it I can put paper, cardboard, tins, plastics but not all types of recyclable plastic only a few specifics but I can't put glass in. We have a regularly emptied bottle bank in the village so I put glass there we also have clothing banks here too and I put clothing/shoes/linens in them. We have compost bins on the allotment and in the garden so all veg waste goes into them, we also recycle newspapers into papier mache bricks to use to light the woodstove and still I have waste that goes into the main dustbin, things I can't recycle or use for compost. We never fill the bin but there is still a proportion of what is used for packaging and meat/fish products that I can't dispose of in any other way. Our council don't as yet give us a food caddy. I can't bring meat/fish etc home without packaging in the same way I can fruit/veg so with the best will in the world to be green and recycle as much as I possibly can I still produce some waste.

Rainy-Days

The thing is there is just plastic that cannot be escaped from. Allot of the food transported to store is on pallets - the pallets are heavily shrink wrapped to prevent movement and damage of the goods. The wrap has to be removed and binned! It's also stuff held in cages as well such as fresh flowers and plants!

If you take the issue with the fresh counter section as being prime example - I just take the view that for health and safety food standard reasons it cannot be dealt with any other way.

If they spray the scales with an anti-bac then that will transfer directly to the food. Does anybody want their ham, cheese, bacon or whatever tainted with that? The answer is no! So the film is placed between the scale and the food to prevent cross transfer. There are just some things that make total valid sense. Even if you were to use the argument of say well how about greaseproof paper - well yes it could work, but the thrust of the argument is that a tree has be felled to make that and as the plastic is a direct by product from petro-chemical processing it makes more sense to use that instead.

There is just stuff that you can't get away from - youghurt pots - we cannot recycle ours, so it gets binned (it goes to incineration buts thats our neck of the woods). Do I give up my yoghurt then because it can't be recycled?

Two years ago when I cleared out the loft I came across an old Sainsbury's bag (remember the original light brown background with the orange Sainsbury's writing on them? Some wag would have us believe that it takes 1000 years to break down one of these plastic bags! Well, they cannot explain the fact that, that bag had practically disintegrated when I went to pick it up! How they camne to 1000 years beats me but this figure has being doing the rounds for a while now!

The issue is there is no set uniform recycling requirement across the country. It varies widely and significantly from Council to Council. The point is, I make a bigger fuss about the fact that allot of manufacturers are using palm oil in their foodstuffs and that is a massive problem! Yet everybody seemingly forgets that it represents significant destruction of habitat for allot of wildlife in the rain forests and Orangutangs mainly, who I happen to adore; and they are bearing the brunt of it! Maybe thats just me - because I happen to think animals just rock and to destroy their habitat so we can dunk a McVities biscuit into our morning coffee is wrong (or hit the chocolate vending machine at lunchtime). The manufacturers should be held accountable for the use of this oil which they can easily switch!

Just as a side line - used car tyres are burnt at cemex plant in Rugby which is for concrete production. They also have a co-incinerator there as well apparently starting to burn household waste. Okay, I agree it's not ideal burning waste products, but it has to be massively better than shoving it in a ground with a few pipes coming out to take the methane gases off for years to come! Plastic is being burnt in the similar way that petrol and diesel is, it's just a different process, but coming from the same root source! Use it, then burn it.

GreyQueen

mumps wrote: »

We have three recycling boxes and one wheelie bin, boxes take glass, plastic, paper, cardboard, tins, silver paper, old clothes and shoes (mine go to the CS unless they are totally trashed) oh and we also have a compost bin. The waste gets collected it every fortnight. Sometimes I feel I have a fulltime job sorting it all out, if you put say paper in the cardboard/glass/silver foil bin they won't empty it. Recycle much more than we send to landfill.

We lost our local greengrocer and butcher which leaves me in a dilemma, I can walk to large supermarket and buy meat/veg/fruit or I can drive into town. Which do you think is greener? I haven't made up my mind.

Could you combine the drive to town with other errands, and would this mitigate the extra fuel consumption? It's a job to know what's best. I don't personally have a car so am spared this dilemma, it's shank's pony or the pushbike here. Am thankful that everything recyclable goes in the one bin, here.

Regarding the other poster's comments about contacting the manufacturer/ packer of the supermarket goods - I can't see this being effective. I've worked in the food industry and the packaging was to the supermarket's spec, they were the driving force, not the other way around. You really see the factory management in a lather when they've got M&S buyers or Sains or the other big players in tow; it's like watching royalty visit, there's usually so much grovelling going on. It's a very unequal commercial relationship.

I see the supermarkets as most influential factor. They only have the commercial power that they do because tens of millions of us have chosen them over the other retail options we used to have. And so, for many of us, those options don't exist any more in large swathes of the country.

Of course, what has been chosen can always be un-chosen, and if independant shops start to get a lot of customers, the entrepreneurs out there will start to open more independant shops.

I've been thinking about this a lot over recent years and have come to the conclusion that I need to spend more time with my independants than I do with the supermarkets. If I buy mince from my independant butcher, it is scooped from a tray in the counter and bagged in a thin one-use plastic bag with a tape seal. If I buy the same thing from a supermarket, it is incarcerated in a plastic coffin (recyclable here) with a peel off plastic film lid (not recyclable here). Much more packaging.

I wonder if when I next need mince, if I take a spotlessly clean container, if they'll tare it on the scale and scoop straight into there, or if they'll scoop the mince onto a small bit of paper/ plastic on the scale and then shoot that into my container? Or if they'll refuse outright? I've been shopping with them for years and we have an affable relationship. I could try this at some point next week (meal plan for this week involves non-mince things which I already own).

Just taken a call from my computer wizard to come tomorrow, see what ails this 13 y.o. pooter and if it's fixable. There's already quite a lot of non-original components inside and it's been ramped up considerably from the manufacturer's spec. If I can, I shall keep using it, have to hope the fault isn't the IT equivalent of the big end going........:p

Rainy-Days, I've had a dust-up with Mr T over changing their own brand peanut butter to one with palm oil and took it back for refund and got a call back from the company. I haven't bought it since (they've tried tempting me with discount vouchers for it, but I check the label and if it's got palm oil in it, they can keep it).

mumps

GreyQueen wrote: »

Could you combine the drive to town with other errands, and would this mitigate the extra fuel consumption? It's a job to know what's best. I don't personally have a car so am spared this dilemma, it's shank's pony or the pushbike here. Am thankful that everything recyclable goes in the one bin, here.

Regarding the other poster's comments about contacting the manufacturer/ packer of the supermarket goods - I can't see this being effective. I've worked in the food industry and the packaging was to the supermarket's spec, they were the driving force, not the other way around. You really see the factory management in a lather when they've got M&S buyers or Sains or the other big players in tow; it's like watching royalty visit, there's usually so much grovelling going on. It's a very unequal commercial relationship.

I see the supermarkets as most influential factor. They only have the commercial power that they do because tens of millions of us have chosen them over the other retail options we used to have. And so, for many of us, those options don't exist any more in large swathes of the country.

Of course, what has been chosen can always be un-chosen, and if independant shops start to get a lot of customers, the entrepreneurs out there will start to open more independant shops.

I've been thinking about this a lot over recent years and have come to the conclusion that I need to spend more time with my independants than I do with the supermarkets. If I buy mince from my independant butcher, it is scooped from a tray in the counter and bagged in a thin one-use plastic bag with a tape seal. If I buy the same thing from a supermarket, it is incarcerated in a plastic coffin (recyclable here) with a peel off plastic film lid (not recyclable here). Much more packaging.

I wonder if when I next need mince, if I take a spotlessly clean container, if they'll tare it on the scale and scoop straight into there, or if they'll scoop the mince onto a small bit of paper/ plastic on the scale and then shoot that into my container? Or if they'll refuse outright? I've been shopping with them for years and we have an affable relationship. I could try this at some point next week (meal plan for this week involves non-mince things which I already own).

Just taken a call from my computer wizard to come tomorrow, see what ails this 13 y.o. pooter and if it's fixable. There's already quite a lot of non-original components inside and it's been ramped up considerably from the manufacturer's spec. If I can, I shall keep using it, have to hope the fault isn't the IT equivalent of the big end going........:p

Rainy-Days, I've had a dust-up with Mr T over changing their own brand peanut butter to one with palm oil and took it back for refund and got a call back from the company. I haven't bought it since (they've tried tempting me with discount vouchers for it, but I check the label and if it's got palm oil in it, they can keep it).

I do combine it with trips to the bank but don't go into town very often otherwise. It is a puzzle.

fuddle

juno wrote: »

A stand is good, but only if people know it. And so far, nobody who actually needs to know (because they can do anything about it) will know. For this to work, she's even admitted that other people need to make it happen - the cashier has to notice, and then the cashier has to tell management, who then have to sort it. That's relying on other people rather than doing anything yourself.

Even writing to a newspaper or making an online petition would have more effect, because there's slightly more chance of the action leading to a result. At the moment, there is no result possible.

I'm not against change, and I'm not against the environment or reducing waste. But this is not reducing waste. It's moving the waste, and then hoping that someone else will do something.

I disagree. A stand can be a very personal thing. If someone takes exception to something they can take exception, change their behaviour and educate themselves privately or, as many of us do, write about it amongst like minded people on a forum.

Lillibet is taking a stand for herself and that is something to celebrate as it's difficult to go against the grain, the norm or the expected. I feel anyway

eandjsmum

There is just stuff that you can't get away from - youghurt pots - we cannot recycle ours, so it gets binned (it goes to incineration buts thats our neck of the woods). Do I give up my yoghurt then because it can't be recycled?

We've taken to making our own yoghurt. It can be mixed with fruit or jam to flavour used plain and as a culture for the next batch. This means that I only have to buy a small pot of plain yoghurt occasionally. The empty yoghurt pots are then washed out and used as flower pots, paint pots or glue pots. We also reuse empty marge and ice- cream containers and plastic bags.

Our council also recycles tetrapak at the local recycling centres, but not with the waste collection.

Rainy-Days

eandjsmum wrote: »

We've taken to making our own yoghurt. It can be mixed with fruit or jam to flavour used plain and as a culture for the next batch. This means that I only have to buy a small pot of plain yoghurt occasionally. The empty yoghurt pots are then washed out and used as flower pots, paint pots or glue pots. We also reuse empty marge and ice- cream containers and plastic bags.

Our council also recycles tetrapak at the local recycling centres, but not with the waste collection.

The issue is - and I keep saying this - that Council to Council the recycling requirements vary and some significantly so! Ours will not take Tetrapak and there is no facility to recycle it either. Butter/Marg tubs etc are also non-recycleable, BUT our waste goes for incineration so it deals with it in a different way!

I am the only one in the house that has yoghurt - DH avoids it! I also have it occasionally here and there so to make it and buy for example the Easi-Yo stuff is completely wasteful! If you are a family you can do this, but if you live on your own, or if there is just two of you, which vast amounts of households now are - then the argument becomes defunct doesn't it!

The point is this there is stuff that cannot be recycled, it either goes to landfill, or to what many councils are taking up and that is co-inceration. I happen to think that incernation is the very best way to deal with it! It saves going to landfill and giving off harmful methane gases, which escape to the atmosphere and change the structure of the ozone layer! So, we all recycle where we can, but there is just stuff that cannot be tollerated by LA's and they dictate to the end user what those specific requirements are - YES?

Three years ago during a bad winter my cousin went absolutely ballistic - in fact she rang me at work in a state of madness. The binmen had pitched up and emptied her refuse bin as well as the recycling bin into the same lorry. She rang the council and went barmy at them - reply came back it was all going for burning anyway and as they were a crew short it was felt that this was the only solution! Beat that one!

GreyQueen

Staged an intervention at the communal bins when I came home from work and discovered someone had dumped cardboard boxes spilling plastic bags and polystrene packaging beside the bins. Because they can climb into the bins unaided, I guess must be the thinking.

I decided to deal with it before the polystrene and plastic got all over the neighbourhood and before the cardboard got rained-upon, so divvidied the items up into the refuse and the recycling, breaking down the box. Which still had an address label on so I know which neighbour junked it. They have form for this kind of thing so I wasn't surprised. One chunk of polystene the size of half a football was already up beside my flat and 10 metres from the rest of the stuff.

I dealt with it because it would otherwise blow around the neighbourhood and be an eyesore for more than a week and the minor irritation of dealing with it was going to work out less than the considerable irritation of looking at it day after day. I've tried ignoring similar things in the past and looking at it is definately worse than dealing with it.

I've worked in factories and shops and am a fast hand at breaking down cardboard boxes.

clickerty-click

Well done OP for taking the initiative, our food is vastly over packaged. One of my personal gripes is when you buy a pack of 4 yogurts that are then wrapped up in an unnecessary cardboard sleeve. I don't think I would have the bottle to take my own tub to the supermarket to be filled but I have seen someone turn up at my local takeaway with their own and the lady behind the counter didn't bat an eyelid so that must be something they do on a regular basis.

bluebag

Not posted on here for a good while, so Hi to all. One thing that bothers me a lot about my recycling is the need to wash everything out before putting it in the bin.

I wonder if anyone has done a study on how many extra resources are consumed nationally for this. Clean water requires a lot of processing.

I feel quite a lot of the 'green ' initiatives and recycling don't take into account the whole picture. Like individuals driving to the tip regularly to recycle the stuff that's not collected.

On a national level maybe this is worse for the enviroment, I wonder if any one has done any research on that too?

Yogurt pots, I'm at a loss !