| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Treacodactyl |
Rubbish, againI've just put out the rubbish for it's weekly collection. For our household of two adults we had two carrier bags worth or half a small black sack's worth. Looking around the street other similar households have put out at least 2 large black sacks worth and those with a small family have over 6!!! Even if you include our recycling it would only be one sack a week max.Now the question is can anyone name any incentive for people to produce less waste? With cars you have extra fuel duty, higher car tax for the more polluting cars, congestion charging etc, etc; but there's nothing to encourage people to reduce household waste is there? An interesting aside, it looks like someone was a bit guilty about the number of bags they were throwing out and they left some outside the front of our house. Goodness knows what would happen if we were charged for each bag we put out. 
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| Northern_Lad |
Re: Rubbish, again
Shoot them if they go over an annual target? |
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| judith |
It's difficult to think of anything that would work without ending up causing grief and inconvenience for those who do produce a reasonable amount of refuse.
Our council gives every household a roll of binbags, with enough to put out one bag every week. The idea is that, if you use more than that, you buy another roll of bags. Which doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. Unfortunately it doesn't work - people just put out other bags instead and they are picked up by the bin men. The only alternative would be to leave the unathorised bags outside the houses, which would only end up inconveniencing everyone else as they are torn open by cats/dogs/foxes. |
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| Róisín |
Our waste is done by weight here. You pay extra the more weight you create. Seems to be working - my 60 year old parents have become experts in recycling since this was brought in. (Ireland) | ||||
| judith |
That's interesting. Where is the rubbish weighed and how are people charged? |
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| Behemoth |
Weight isn't the greatest measure though, volume is important too.
The only thing that most people respond to is an economic penalty/incentive. That's what matters too them. However introducing that would lead to peolpe trying to dodge costs and load them on others or flytip. I keep finding that a lot people don't actually see rubbish as being theirs. They don't own it and it's not their responsibility once it's in the bin. It seems to transfer to a nebulous 'they' or 'the council' who should be expected to take anything and everything. All costs are covered by the council tax irrespective of the load generated. We, family of three, seem to generate 1 to 1.5 binbags a week. |
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| cab |
The answer is in the three Rs; reduce, reuse, recycle.
Tax food packaging. The more plastic, the more packaging, the more tax. Financial incentive to reduce. Campaing for European bottle and jars to be standardised; we don't need 300 or more different glass bottles and jars in every supermarket when there are probably only 30 different volumes represented. Make reuse the priority over recycling, and give tax breaks (on the packaging tax listed above) to those manufacturers who reuse packaging (easier to do if they're standard bottles/jars etc.). Alongside rules for reducing and reusing, we also need rules to make recycling genuinely appealing; we don't need crisp packets lined with foil, they're hard to recycle, we don't need foil and plastic lined drink cartons. Make packaging out of standardised container materials and its cheaper and easier to recycle with less sorting and less waste. Binmen and local waste enforcement officers (many councils now have them) know who the problem people are, but they're constrained from doing anything meaningful about it. Let them take their gloves off, give them meaningful legal powers to take action against the most wasteful. |
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| wishus |
In an ideal world, some measures on taxing volumes/weights of rubbish would work, but I suspect my neighbours would take advantage of others, and I'm sure they wouldn't be alone.
When my next door neighbours trimmed their trees, I noticed that they'd actually come into my back garden when I wasn't there to use my green bin to deposit the cuttings as theirs was full. I didn't mind, but they hadn't asked and I could have objected. I've also come back on a bin day to find that my neighbours, having missed the bin men, have put a load of packaging (polystyrene) into my bin, so I'm the one who has to find space for my rubbish for the week round it... luckily I don't throw away that much. If my council started imposing fines or whatnot, I' sure I'd end up with some for the stuff that other people sneak into my bins. And it would probably encourage fly-tipping. I think you probably have to start the encouragement with kids at school - maybe then they can pester their parents into being greener. |
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| Behemoth |
At least it went in the bin.
I agree with Cab about paying for the disposal of packaging at the point of purchase rather than the moment it comes to dispose of it. This drives both the producer to reduce and the consumer to buy cheaper. |
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| Tinks |
There is no valid reason as far as I can see why legislation isn't put on producers. If the governemnt is serious about the environment (which it isn't, it's an excuse to introduce more taxes) they could sort it out straight away and make it illegal to use certain packaging. The end consumer need not be offered a choice where packaging is concerned. | ||||
| Behemoth |
The problem with making stuff illegal is that in some circumstances certain packaging is appropriate. e.g a plastic blister pack around a pair of pliers is unnecessary, the same packaging around something that is delicate that could get damaged in transit may be the best thing for it. Much more stuff could come in simple cardboard boxes though. | ||||
| Tinks |
Or rice paper or corn starch stuff. M&S use a corn starch type jobby on their pre-pack sandwiches.
I wonder when you consider all the jobs that are involved in the production of packaging, if you banned it, what would be the cost to the economy/employment?? |
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| fallscrape |
A lot of foreign businesses would go bust. |
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| Treacodactyl |
We have to buy our own bags round here and people often put them out at night so the foxes, cats & dogs can pull them apart. At least it means I often see what people throw out! Which leads me nicely to the idea of taxing packaging. It sounds like a good idea but an awful lot of rubbish is not packaging but unwanted goods like clothes or food that's not been used. Even though people round here have plenty of room for composting they still throw out green waste in their landfill rubbish. Another reason for not just taxing packaging is that some people use it. For example, someone might reuse the bottles from a case of wine and burn/compost the cardboard box.
Charging for rubbish does seem to work in other countries so I think it should be being looked at seriously here. Perhaps a more radical idea which would cover more areas of energy or waste would be an ecological self assessment. People could fill one out annually and their council tax would be calculated on it along with other factors such as age etc? |
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| Mrs Fiddlesticks |
I play a game each week of looking to see how much rubbish folk put out; I can think of one family in the street with 5 kids who regularly put out about 10 big black bin bags! I've never seen them use the recycling bin. We put out on average an old fashioned metal dustbin for 4 people and 2 cats and its not always full. But in order to get like that we've changed how we shop, what we eat, and how we deal with waste that we produce.
There is a green waste and cardboard collecting bin but you have to pay (only £28 annually) but out of a street of approx 30 houses there are only about 3 households who have taken this up. I agree with Behemoth that folk don't view the rubbish as their problem. I'd go further and say that most people don't even think about the amount of rubbish they chuck out; it just doesn't feature as a problem or something they should try to reduce. Perhaps a few public campaigns or 'hard hitting' documentaries are needed to shock and educate folk that the rubbish they produce is important and it has an eco effect. But we've created a disposable society, in so many directions from food and its packaging ( which we expect to protect us from contamination due in the past to some high profile cases of tampering; rare though they are) to things like toothbrushes and ink cartridges which are over packaged due to shoplifting and security issues ( which if the shops employed more staff would probably be unnecessary). The solution to a seemingly simple problem is going to be quite complex. |
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| oldish chris |
This is a good point. It wasn't so long ago,(less than 20 years?) that fizzy drinks and beer was sold in returnable bottles. (I've still got a few "flagons" that i use for home-brewed ale.) I have a vague recollection that Grolsch beer was sold in returnable bottles fairly recently. I'm sure that one of the North Western States of the USA (Oregon possibly) has a law that all containers (bottles and cans) are sold with a deposit - reclaimable on their return to the supermarket. |
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| Nick |
How much is this a problem? Yes, it takes up space, but it'll compost down, or is there a problem with it breaking down differently, due to a lack of oxygen, or something? This is a genuine question to which I don't know the answer. |
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| Treacodactyl |
Well most green stuff could either be composted and used as a growing medium or burnt to produce energy. If it's landfilled then it will take up space but as it decomposes it'll give off gas and shrink. Now if the landfill site has been built on you don't want gas or subsidence. I don't know how much of a problem it is but the councils do try and encourage green waste recycling if you look at their web site but don't seem to do much about it. |
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| wellington womble |
Doesn't it produce methane if it breaks down anerobically? Greenhouse gas, not tapped, and makes ex landfill sites a pretty unpleasant and possibly dangerous place to be?
Dredging up memories from GCSE geography lessons, landfill sites are lined with clay or plastic to prevent leaching, so the solid component is also 'lost' from the soil. I'm prepared to be corrected by someone who has more recent knowledge than half remembered school lessons from twenty years ago, though! |
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| cab |
Thats all true I believe. Its also not as complete a process, composting in a great big land fill. You end up wasting landfill space on top of all that. |
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| Jamanda |
One place in Ireland we have stayed at, they have to buy special bin bags from the council with big letters on them to identify them. The bags are available from post offices, corner shops etc, but cost quite a lot. These bags are the only ones the council will take away. Plain black bags get left on the road side. It seems to work generally, though of course some dipsticks resort to fly-tipping. | ||||
| Nick |
Thanks, I knoew I'd asked this, but something prompted me to head back and check the answers! |
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| dibnah |
I know what you mean about the amount of rubbish, we are a family of 5 and always have the least amount of rubbish, every other bin, bar a few, is overflowing with waste, mostly plastic. We have two bins, which are collected, one for landfill and the other for green waste kitchen scraps /garden waste, they also collect cans,tins,glass, paper and charity bags. It makes me sick. 
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| thos |
There are small differences between communes, but in Jauche:
- Cans and Cartons go in special blue sacks. These are cheap. - Rubbish goes in special white sacks, which cost 75c each. This covers about half the total cost - the other half is on the rates. Both these bags are sold in shops within each commune. The blue sacks are standard, but each commune has its own rubbish sack. - Paper and cardboard goes into boxes. Bottles must be taken to the bottlebank. There is one in every village. Beer bottles have a deposit, as do artisanal products such as apple juice and yoghurt. Anything except household rubbish may be taken to the containerpark. There used to be an annual collection of large items, but the Liberal Council stopped it because it cost them €53 per tonne. We now have a Socialist/Green/Christian coalition, and one of their first acts was to introduce free collection after a telephone call. Consumer items have a recycling tax. If you have, for example, a washing machine or sofa delivered, they must take the old one away to a recycling centre. There is no charge, but they may keep the recycling tax. According to the Commune, we generated 157kg of household rubbish per inhabitant last year. I don't know how that compares to other countries, but the average for the canton is 167kg. The average house seems to have one sack out each week. |
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| dibnah |
It's our bin collection day today, most of the bins are overflowing, thats in a week!! one of my neighbours has just walked past and dropped some rubbish in my bin as it's only half full, this is slightly anoying but I don't loose sleep over it but what is anoying is the fact that it was a glass bottle inside a thin card box, both can be recycled by simply putting them into the boxes that they also collect today.
The woman who did it is also a teacher, we have such a long way to go. 
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| Helen_A |
argh
well I've just discovered that I've moved somewhere that I can recycle pretty much everything BUT there is nowhere that will take kitchen waste - and our rental contract specifically asks us not to run a compost bin. The council site says that they take compostables.... but only grass is considered a compostable, not raw veg or fruit peel.... anyone in north herts/south cambridgeshire need things for the compost heap? then the only rubbish I'll have is the occasional bit of cooked stuff that the children have rejected and the tetrapacks. I'm really narked that but for those two and peel I'd be filling the bin once every couple of months at most... sigh |
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| judith |
But I bet it doesn't say anything about a worm bin, though, does it? 
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| mosschops |
When we first arrived here we didn't have council rubbish collection - we were the poms who hopefully put 2 black bags on the roadside outside our house for TWO weeks until one of bf's pupils said 'why are you putting rubbish outside your house sir?' and we twigged.
Now collection has been extended down our road, but along with the rest of New Zealand it will only be collected if it is in council bin bags which can be bought from a variety of shops for $2.40 each. We also have a recycling 'box' which is like a large cardboard box (only made of recycled plastic) that we can put out at the same time. Steph |
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| Treacodactyl |
There's something on the BBC about charging people for rubbish in Belgium, seems to work quite well if the story is accurate. Much more recycling and there doesn't seem to be much of a problem with people using other people's bins or fly tipping.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6539813.stm |
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| cab |
Our rubbish collections are free, and we still have a problem with fly tipping and people using our bin
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| Treacodactyl |
The article it shows how the people using your bin can be solved and if the government and councils took fly tipping seriously that could easily be greatly reduced. IIRC the last prosecution for fly tipping round here resulted in a £50 fine, you get fined more if your self assessment is late. 
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| thos |
The article is a load of non-organic refuse.
Most communes in Belgium charge by the bag. Sometimes you buy a special bag, colour-coded for the commune and sometimes you use a normal black binbag, onto which you put a sticker. We pay 75c. Cartons and paper & cardboard are not charged because they are recycled, and glass needs to go in the special containers, one per village. Some politicians want to set up collections of compostables, but others want to increase home composting. There seems little advantage in changing to a system of charging by weight when charging by volume works so well. It is also much faster for the binmen to chuck a binbag into the vehicle rather than flaff around with bins. According to the Commune, we generated 157kg of household rubbish per inhabitant last year. I don't know how that compares to other countries, but the average for the canton is 167kg. The average house seems to have one sack out each week. Our problem is that they collect our side of the road at 0630 Monday morning. I put our sack (for the five of us) across the road for 0715. |
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| gnome |
one way to get people to be more responsible about their waste would be for local authorities to set a good example. maybe they could really recycle the "recycling" waste they collect instead of landfilling it or shipping it off to China. just a suggestion. |