| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| alison |
recycle boxesI have just had the recycle company on the phone, complaining that we have put out too much recycling.I thought the council wanted it recycled. Apparently if everyone did it then they would have to put more lorries on the road, and that can't happen. Obviously I am fuming about it. We aren't talking business stuff, just personal. |
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| RichardW |
That sounds about right. Same here when the council did a trial in town recycling more stuff they could not cope with the amount so went back to taking less items.
The cycnical part of me thinks that if eveyone recycled lots now & the targets for 2010 are met sooner than the goal posts will get moved to make it harder & they dont want that. Justme |
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| Fee |
Well, looks like my plastic box that I put out instead of the carrier bags, as advised to, has been totally ignored this morning. We're the only household that puts recycling out every week anyway, so I'm guessing the van just drove past because he didn't see any carriers on his way past!!! I'll leave it out until this afternoon, just in case he's late this week or something. |
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| cab |
I'm baffled... How much was too much? | ||||
| alison |
We put out 4 boxes, for the house and the cottage (Mum and dad).
We separate cans, plastics bottles and paper, so they have to lift one box into each container, rather than sort. They lose the contract from next week, and I think they were trying to pick up comercial contracts, but there is no way I will use them. I'll see what the council do next week, when they take over, in house. |
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| RichardW |
Do they know its from two houses?
Does not sound like much to me & you have done the hard bit for them. I bet they just wanted to cut costs for the last week. Justme |
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| Treacodactyl |
I know you said it wasn't business waste but it looks like some councils are getting a bit picky.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7355983.stm |
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| JB |
The cynical part of me wonder how much of that is because domestic recycling is low volume so cheap to provide but highly visible to the electorate. |
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| cinders |
mmmm lately we've been taking our recycleables home from work i didn't know you could be done for it 
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| gnome |
they only drive around for a while and then tip it into landfill when they think nobody is looking anyway. curbside recycling is just a big con - it doesnt work. the paper and card is landfilled in ireland, the plastics are shipped off to china, the bottles are sent to a glass recycler - who then has to pay to have it all landfilled because the collectors have mixed them all up and broken them. the only things that do get recycled are tin cans. | ||||
| gil |
Have you got a source for that info ? - would be really useful. |
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| gnome |
yes - a report in the guardian a couple of weeks back, and a TV documentary on channel 4 last year - plus i have a friend who once followed a consignment of municiple waste plastic, supposedly collected for recycling, but ended up being loaded onto a ship bound for china.
as for the glass bottles - i spoke to a glass recycler at a recycling conference who explained that when there were big recycle containers for glass outside supermarkets, it was great - one for brown glass, one for green, one for clear etc. and that's how he recieved it. but when councils switched to curbside recycling, they only supply one box for glass - so all the green, brown, and clear glass goes into one big heap. it gets broken in transit, so by the time he gets it, it is all contaminated waste, and he cant recycle it, so it has to be landfilled. as recyclers - even community and charity based recycle organisations - are classed as commercial, the waste cannot be called municiple anymore. that way, when it ends up in landfill, it is no longer municiple waste so LA s have discharged their responsibility for getting shot of household waste. what LA waste management records say is happening on paper bears little relation to what actually happens in practice. |
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| toggle |
all of it, all the time? |
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| Jamanda |
Easier to think so - it absolves you of any personal responsibility. |
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| jocorless |
Gnome is well versed in this (and a good friend of mine) - He works for a furniture recycling charity - So I'm inclined to believe him although I still recycle everything anyway | ||||
| Fee |
Well, they haven't picked up my recycling box, and now it;s been rained on.
A phone call will be made tomorrow, from a stern Fee. |
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| sean |
Our glass ends up here. According to their website they can reseparate the mixed stuff. | ||||
| gil |
Thanks for those, gnome. Must have missed the Guardian article. It does make you wonder. I do know that there is still no facility in the UK for recycling green glass, so I did wonder where everyone's wine bottles went. Clear and brown glass can be recycled and remade in the UK (beer bottles, and lots of food/drink in clear glass). |
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| ros |
glassdoesn't get collected kerbside here, we have to take it to a bottle bank. The closest one takes mixed colours, the one at the tidy tip separates them. There is a big note on the latter saying no cut crystal glass, but not on the former.
I thought most glass got smashed up and used in road laying now. |
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| Jamanda |
Green and mixed glass can go into brown glass which is the lowest category. Unfortunately we don't use enough brown glass to use it up.
My Dad used to work for Rockware glass who make bottle and jars and that was always one of his pet topics. You should have heard him on plastic bottles and the move away from reusing milk bottles and beer and pop bottles. He was like Cab and his bikes! 
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| gnome |
thanks for that info - unfortunately, very few recyclers can afford the very expensive optical sorters. i for one am very curious as to how it actually seperates the different coloured glass once t has identified it. low grade mixed glass can be used for making road surfaces, but it has no value, so the recycler does not get paid for supplying it, and demand is limited. recycling services are somewhat regional - it depends on how far a municipal site is from a particular type of reprocessing plant, and what they can take. there is some deception in recycling though - some recycling centres have made false claims, and all publicity has to be taken with a pinch of salt. i know of one municial waste disposal site which showed visitors a "recycling machine" which they claimed turned household waste into recycled materials - but all it did was crush and bale the waste to make it easier to transport. plastic, glass, and paper do not have an iromn content, so cannot be seperated by a magnet. if anyone out there has invented a plastic magnet, please step up and claim your reward now. the trouble with todays hi-tech society is that we have come to accept that anything is possible, so don't ask ourselves how it is done. |
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| mochyn |
Well, I was going to take the recycling with to deal with when I go out, but now I don't know what to do!
I'll probably take and then try to find out about local services when I get back. |
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| derbyshiredowser |
The council binmen emptied my fornightly collected wheelybin yesterday, unfortunately they emptied it over the pavement and in my hedge. It was definately them as there was no rubbish on the floor before they came and my lid was closed.I emailed them photos and suggested that they use my inflation busting council tax rise to purchase a brush and a training course for their binmen. I struggled to brush up all the rubbish back into the bin and then the council said it would be 48 hours before they can return to empty it again. | ||||
| gnome |
this is probably their new strategy to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill - they scatter it in the street and in peoples gardens instead.
it's a good idea to research the recycling options in your area quite thoroughly - on the whole, council's are not particularly well informed. waste management is often farmed out, so your local municipal refuse site is likely to be run by a private company, not the council. increasingly, councils are tendering out refuse collection to private companies too. a lot of recycling and re-use is actually done by charities and community groups, and on the whole, councils don't always work too well with them, so in many cases dont even know of their existence. before you pay the council to take away waste, find out if there is a community group or organisation in your area that will do it for free. a great many designated recycling centres do not actually recycle themselves - they collect and sort recyclables and then send them on to a dedicated recycling plant. you will find that many have a carefully scheduled collection service, so don't expect someone to suddenly jump in a van and drive 15 miles through the countryside to collect your half dozen wine bottles at the drop of a hat. they will probably add you to their list when they are doing your area. there may well be someone in your area producing a recycling directory - ask at the library or CAB. try contacting whoever does your local community newsletter - these are often a mine of information, and are often more interested in that sort of thing than the local newspaper. I know everyone assumes the council does all this - and we tend to expect it of them (and they are always quick to take the credit), but really we are paying the price for decades of buying things we dont need and throwing away things that have nothing wrong with them. |
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| vegplot |
We're only allowed one small box so we got around the problem by buying some recylcing bags, separating plastic, paper & card and tetrapacks. We put bottles in the pick up box but the rest we take them down to the local recycling centre and pick up some kindling wood (if there is any) from there as well. The centre is a small detour from work or when we go into the 'city'.
Our landfill waste is now a bin liner's worth every few months. |
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| gnome |
Our recycling boxes are quite small too, and they will only take what's in the boxes, and they wont take them mixed - so you can't mix newspapers with tin cans for instance. but we only got two boxes, so we somehow have to pile tins on one side and bottles on the other in one box, then put paper in the other. they only collect once a fortnight, so we can't recycle very much.
they recently started to collect plastic bottles too, and got two extra boxes, so we ue one of the plastic recycle boxes for bottles (we get through a lot of bottles and jars). the collectors just tip it all into one vehicle, so i dont know why we have to sepearate it - it all gets mixed up anyway. |