KonMari 2018 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Karmacat

I'm full of admiration for our recycling tip, the main one, to the south of me, is absolutely huge - there's a warehouse where all the recycling actually happens, but the bit where you put your stuff (i.e., tip it over a 30 foot drop) is about 100 yards across a courtyard. And the green waste waiting to go for recycling proper was so plentiful it was actually starting to steam with self generated heat at one stage! Wonderful

That said, they don't take shredded paper to recycle and there's a lot of plastics and coloured inks in it that mean I don't want it on the garden

WeeMidgie

... and another trip to the local recycling centre with stuff.

All books are now in boxes, and the spare room is done. It just needs the hospice furniture shop guys to come and uplift the no.longer needed furniture.

I did my final bits of shredding today until after the move. The shredder's now in a box. I have a B&M store nearby which is a great source for cardboard boxes.

I won't need my clothes horse in the new place, so it's being kondo'd to a friend, who's also inheriting my very beautiful fake stone MDF hearth. She has a patch of not quite matching carpet where a floor mounted electric fire was taken out, and the hearth will look very good under the wall mounted fire which is there instead.

greenbee

Our recycling is shocking - they hardly take anything. Probably because they invested so much in waste-to-energy plants a while ago and need to feed them (they claim this isn't true, but can't explain why our recycling facilities are so primitive compared to elsewhere...

Weekly food waste collection seems to be the thing that makes a real difference in most places, as that's what stops bins smelling on the 2-weekly collection cycle. Sadly we don't have that. My mum's recycling takes everything in the one bin, including glass and tetrapaks/cartons that many places don't take.

Interestingly most of my neighbours seem to have very little idea of what they can and can't recycle, so I suspect much of ours is contaminated. I know that where my mum is they've invested in sorting facilities so are less bothered about whether people get it wrong as they filter stuff out. I think they worked out that self-sorting by the general population doesn't work - and the sorting plant provides employment plus allows them to get good contracts as they provide good quality recyclables to their suppliers.

maryb

I am undecided about whether recycling or incineration is a better choice in terms of complete lifecycle. It starts as oil so burning plastic is effectively burning oil. Recycling sounds good but from what I can gather it can't currently be REcycled, it's DOWNcycled as lower grade plastic and much of it ends up in synthetic fibres which are polluting the oceans with microplastics and from there getting into the food chain:eek: I think incineration with appropriate filters to ensure dioxins aren't released into the atmosphere might be preferable to contaminating our food with endocrine disrupting chemicals

But the situation is changing fast because there is a lot of research going on and new technology developing. Just this week there were reports about new developments which can return pastics to their 'building blocks' in which case it's recycling all the way!!

My local council is pretty good. We can put nearly all plastic in the recycling apart from plastic wrapping with the 4 symbol which I save up and take to the carrier bag recycling at our local Sainsbugs or Waitrose.

But it seems to me the only indisputably environmentally sound approach is to use less stuff generally

greenbee

Absolutely maryb. I was horrified at the amount of packaging when I did a supermarket shop & delivery yesterday. Normally everything comes via my veg box delivery or health food shop and packaging is minimal. But I was away and there was no food or anything else. I need to sort the freezer better so I can deal with my travel better.

GreyQueen

We tend to think of our councils as 'recycling' but what's actually happening in these centres is the sorting and baling of recyclable materials for sale to smelters, processors etc.

Ultimately, recycling is better than landfill or destroying materials by fire, but the better solution is to use less of all materials and not use plastics for single use things like food packaging. Sez she with some 90% off bowl salads bought on YS discount this afternoon. Not the kind of thing I'd ever contemplate buying at full retail. The peel-off film lid is non-recyclable here, the bowl can be re (down) cycled.

Advanced civilisations have thrived for thousands of years before plastics were ever a twinkle in a chemist's eye, and we could do so much better than we do now.

I'd like to see a world where manufacturers of anything had to get approval before they could market in anything other than basic paper and board printed with soya inks. As in, hard questions about where their product is going after use, and who is going to be paying for that? We're a very ingenious species, we can work around this.

Mind you, knowing how many soiled disposable nappies get put into recycling bins in my county per annum, I'm frightened for a future where very stupid people seem to be procreating en masse...:rotfl:

climbs off soapbox.

greenbee

I'd like my council to have a food waste collection.

And to work harder to make reusable nappies an acceptable option (subsidising them perhaps, and providing nappy laundering services) so that disposable nappies become less acceptable. I know my brother complained about how with 2 kids in nappies and fortnightly collections the bins weren't big enough (and were unpleasant in summer) but they didn't even think about reusables, where as many of my friends preferred them.

GreyQueen

Is home composting a possibility for you, greenbee? I was vaguely of the impression that you lived rurally, had a garden?

We have food waste collections in this area but I only use them for the rare bit of animal waste, such as the chicken carcase after boiled down for stock. Anything not meat or fish goes to the compost dalek on the allotments - it isn't advisable to put animal remains into compost bins as it attracts rats.

My neighbourhood is a bit rough (OK, let's not beat about the bush, it's infamous-clean-across-the-region-in-policing-circles-rough) but several of my neighbours bring warm glows to my cynical heart by recycling diligently (one set of bins is directly in my line of sight).

greenbee

I have far more garden waste than I can compost given the amount of space. I also don't have a huge amount of use for compost... I'm reluctant to put food waste of any kind in it as we have neighbours with chickens and they tend to get rats.

I do need to rebuild my composting system with larger bins as at the moment they are too small to be useful.

GreyQueen

greenbee wrote: »

I have far more garden waste than I can compost given the amount of space. I also don't have a huge amount of use for compost... I'm reluctant to put food waste of any kind in it as we have neighbours with chickens and they tend to get rats.

I do need to rebuild my composting system with larger bins as at the moment they are too small to be useful.

Ahh, that makes sense.

As a singleton household, it takes me two years to get a dalek's worth of compost from veg trimmings (even including the inedible bits off the home-grown veggies), and a dalek = about 1-2 square metres of soil fertilised.

I don't compost things like the dreaded horsetails, couch grass and other horrors which lay dormant in compost then giggle and grow again. I'm experimenting with drying them out in rows, turning them regularly and will be burning them come October and adding the ash into the soil for the nutrients. Am trying to treat the allotment as a closed-loop, rather than shuttle stuff off to the green waste section of the tip, which is a PITA on a pushbike, anyway.

Don't know how neighbourly your neighbours are, and whether you'd want to add something extra to a busy schedule, but could it be that some of your veggie waste might be welcome for chicken feed? I know that MSE stalwart thriftwizard mentioned getting told off by her council for not putting out a food waste bin - their large family's food waste went through the chickens and the litter got composted.

Anyway, must toddle offline or will be kept wakeful by the blue light emitting from the screen. Hope everyone has a good week, looks like the monsoon season is starting in earnest tomorrow, better check my waterwings and kayak are good to go. GQ x