What a whinger. He could have been putting his bins out while he was writing that drivel.
I do think it could be better organised, but it is undeniably sensible not to put valuable resources in holes in the ground even if there was no shortage of them.
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I hadn't heard of this Breitbart site whose output Rog seems to mistake for news. Predictably it turns out to be an American conservative organization, named after its founder, about whose early life I liked this snippet (admittedly from Wikipedia.)
Listening to radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh helped Breitbart refine his political and philosophical positions.
Just in case you thought reason or balance might be intruding on the thinking of our favourite resident fruitcake.
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>> Listening to radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh helped Breitbart refine his political and philosophical positions.
Heh heh... hilarious WDB. The mind boggles at what those positions might have been in their unrefined state.
>> Just in case you thought reason or balance might be intruding on the thinking of our favourite resident fruitcake.
Er... yes, we love the Rastaman, but he has competition even here...
:o}
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>> I hadn't heard of this Breitbart site whose output Rog seems to mistake for news.
Nah - I know it's not news - it's unashamedly opinion.
The London end is edited by James Delingpole, formerly with the Telegraph, who is certainly not of the left!
Give the Guardianista/Beeb leanings of so many lefty fruitcakes here, it's not unfair to have an opposing view:-)
(P.S. I like fruitcake, SWMBO made one yesterday, but I really prefer pasties!)
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Delingpole is NOT one fruit short of being a fruitcake: he is undiluted, concentrated fruitcake with extra nuts..
My simple view is he is nearly wrong - about 75% of the time..
Recycling has been statutory in New York State for at least 30 years...
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>> Delingpole is NOT one fruit short of being a fruitcake: he is undiluted, concentrated fruitcake
>> with extra nuts..
>>
>> My simple view is he is nearly wrong - about 75% of the time..
>>
My simple view is that YOU are wrong 75% of the time!
Just as valid!
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People may be suspicious of the OP article but does anyone know what happens to their recycled waste other than the blue bin goes on Monday and the green bin goes on Thursday?
You might be surprised if you found out where they end up.
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I think alot of it is moved to China to be sorted. I suppose that makes sense as loads of stuff we buy is made there?
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Few years ago the local paper said some of our stuff went to China.
The council now publish exactly what goes where.
Yours might too if you can find it.
Ours is here, fwiw.
www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/info/20128/recycling_centres/505/what_happens_to_recycling
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Thanks Crankcase, i looked at my local council. Most of the waste is sent within 100 miles, although some is sent to China, mainly mixed paper and plastic.
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>> Thanks Crankcase, i looked at my local council. Most of the waste is sent within
>> 100 miles, although some is sent to China, mainly mixed paper and plastic.
>>
Good, Green, CO2 saving stuff there, then!
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>> People may be suspicious of the OP article but does anyone know what happens to their recycled waste other than the blue bin goes on Monday and the green bin goes on Thursday?
>>
>> You might be surprised if you found out where they end up.
>>
A fair bit goes to......
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.....Landfill.
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One of the big problems is the quality of some of the waste put out for recycling which is then rejected by the the recycling plants. Since many make little or no effort to segregate their waste properly or are seemingly unable to tell the difference between a soiled nappy and a glass bottle I'm not surprised.
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>>or are seemingly unable to tell the
>> difference between a soiled nappy and a glass bottle I'm not surprised.
Apply the sniff test.
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The other problem is the bin emptiers have different rules.
My rubbish/recycling regime in respect of what is in which bin/box is different to my brothers about 20 miles way. And we are different to what goes in my mothers bins and boxes.
So I'm not at all surprised at folk getting it wrong. Not through malice or forethough which some councils seem to be accusing folk of doing.
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Yes, bafflingly different rules about what goes in what bag at home and work.
We used to have to separate all our recyclable waste - 2 different kinds of plastic, paper, card, etc. Now it all goes in one bag. Are people somewhere really employed to rummage through thousands of bags fishing out different kinds?
Or does it all go into landfill or to a vast incinerator in China?
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The answer to that is yes. People are employed to separate the waste manually. As much is done as possible with various types of filtering e.g aluminium cans and ferrous metals but much is manual. Went on tour of Norfolk's facility at Costessey ( incidentally pronounced Cossy) and it really is quite impressive. Not a job I want though!
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I went to a rural railway station the other morning for an 0545 train ... and watched the local bin lorry turn up and empty a load of big wheely bins.
They all had different instructions on for differing items.
Yet all got loaded into the same bin lorry.
If someone doesn't believe me, get yourself down to Totnes for the 0545 service to Edinburgh and watch the big red bin lorry.
For our own recycling, we have white bags and blue bags, (as well as a garden waste bin). Blue bags are for paper and white bags for tins...and 'yes' they go in the same bin lorry.
What a waste of time... (sorry for the pun).
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Video of our local recycling plant I mentioned above. It really is quite an operation when you see it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmbEHqOySxI
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Of course anyone would support recycling in principle. In practice though I wouldn't really bother were it not for herself who is bien-pensant, energetic and dutiful. She makes me do it and take the stuff down to the bins at the end of the drive. I grumble but obey.
Couple of things though. All the recycling - paper, glass, tins and plastic bottles - goes in the same container, and the same wheelie bin. Doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. In fact it's hard to escape the conclusion that the council itself is just pretending like the rest of us, and all the crap gets bulldozed wholesale into new reeking bits of landscape, objects of wonder and disgust to archaeologists of the distant future.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Sun 6 Jul 14 at 23:17
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"In fact it's hard to escape the conclusion that the council itself is just pretending like the rest of us, and all the crap gets bulldozed wholesale into new reeking bits of landscape, objects of wonder and disgust to archaeologists of the distant future."
It really doesn't AC - just take a look at the video I posted. It really does get sorted at least in Norfolk. I've been to the plant.
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It seems to vary quite radically from place to place. I have a feeling though that in some places meticulously sorted stuff is combined and just bunged in with the rubbish. And as I said, we have recycling here but all the recycled things are jumbled in together. Shome mishtake shurely?
More like shome shynishism... The rubbish is added at some later stage where we can't see it happening, then everything is dropped into the Thames estuary or pressed into nutritious bricks and fed to the working classes (something like that).
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>> They all had different instructions on for differing items.
>>
>> Yet all got loaded into the same bin lorry.
Exactly why I posted my comment above.. Sun 6 Jul 14 13:54
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The next generation will be less cynical. Indeed half suggest to a school age child that possiby you might be slightly uncertain about recycling, global warming or peak oil and they look at you as if you're Hitler for even questioning it.
They know about him, but not much else, as that seems to be the sum total of history taught.
I exaggerate of course but it does seem the default position today is acceptance of the validity of these things, and in my day the default position was the opposite. It's probably going to better this way in the end.
You often see TV comedies from the 70s and 80s making fun of environmentalists, earth loving students, Greenpeace and so on. Not a plot element in popular culture today.
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No one is doubting that recycling is in principle a good thing, nor that it makes especial sense given the suspicion (putting it no higher than that) that mankind may be damaging the planet by wasteful practices.
But it is hard to escape the doubts that recycling is really no more than window-dressing. (Apart from in Norwich, of course)
Why is it more efficient to mix stuff together and sort it later, rather than just put it in different bags at the point when the waste is discarded?
Why do the authorities deliberately mix say glass of different colours, or different kinds of plastic, when the resulting mix is nearly worthless compared with the real value of the segregated?
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>> Why is it more efficient to mix stuff together and sort it later, rather than
>> just put it in different bags at the point when the waste is discarded?
>>
>> Why do the authorities deliberately mix say glass of different colours, or different kinds of
>> plastic, when the resulting mix is nearly worthless compared with the real value of the
>> segregated?
>>
Have you considered asking your local authority/councillor formally why they do that?
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"Why is it more efficient to mix stuff together and sort it later, rather than
>> just put it in different bags at the point when the waste is discarded?"
Because householders only need one recycling bin instead of seven or eight. Similarly only one collection truck is required.
In addition there always needs to be a degree of manual resorting as some items are put in the wrong bins when separate bins are supplied.
Why do the authorities deliberately mix say glass of different colours, or different kinds of
>> plastic, when the resulting mix is nearly worthless compared with the real value of the
>> segregated?
Depends on what the glass is used for. A lot is now crushed and used for aggregate for things like road building so it doesn't matter what colour it is.
Clear glass cullet is indeed more valuable than green or brown but we use comparatively little green glass in this country and the costs of exporting it to wine producing countries are high and green glass constitutes a large proportion of recycled glass.
Clear glass is also easily contaminated colour wise. A few green bottles in the bin reduces its value considerably.
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>>
>> Why is it more efficient to mix stuff together and sort it later, rather than
>> just put it in different bags at the point when the waste is discarded?
>>
>> Why do the authorities deliberately mix say glass of different colours, or different kinds of
>> plastic, when the resulting mix is nearly worthless compared with the real value of the
>> segregated?
>>
It's because of local issues, some items are worth more than others and where the distance from your local council that demand and those processing centres are. That and how complicated the council want to make the householder sorting also they have to balance all those against cost.
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>> Why do the authorities deliberately mix say glass of different colours, ....when the resulting mix is nearly worthless compared with the real value of the segregated?
>>
In "the old days" of recycling there were bins for clear, green and brown glass.
I had visited Denbies vinyard at Dorking where there were stacks of new empty green wine bottles from imported from France ( the only source at that time?).
This lead me to enquire elsewhere "what happens to green glass?" .
The only larger scale use in the UK was to make Gin bottles and a brand of Scotch bottles and the answer was " Green glass is crushed and added to land fill for roads.
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I'm not sure how the two are linked, why does it matter what some else's, who lives in a different council, recycling is like ?
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>> I'm not sure how the two are linked, why does it matter what some else's,
>> who lives in a different council, recycling is like ?
>>
Because I live in one and work in another.
It's mildly irritating having different criteria for sorting. Each time I rip windows out of junk envelopes at home I'm thinking, I wouldn't have to do this at work.
Also because it is hard to promote a national recycling ethos when different rules apply. I remember about a year ago someone (Swansea?) was fined for separating waste, while someone (Lincolnshire?) was fined for mixing it.
Putting a bit of onus on people to do their bit is encouraging. But mixing things up encourages the belief that it doesn't matter, somewhere lots of volunteers or unemployed will sort it all out further down the line. Or else a giant machine will just process everything.
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>>
>> Putting a bit of onus on people to do their bit is encouraging. But mixing
>> things up encourages the belief that it doesn't matter, somewhere lots of volunteers or unemployed
>> will sort it all out further down the line. Or else a giant machine will
>> just process everything.
>>
Well each area will have it's own, it's not really doable as a national scheme. Until we have the same recycling centres the same distance apart, same demand same costs etc.
Fining people is a last resort, normally people get a tag reminder on the bin. It would have to be pretty bad.
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>>Well each area will have it's own, it's not really doable as a national scheme.
>> Until we have the same recycling centers the same distance apart, same demand same costs etc.
>>
A good example in my area.
I regularly visit Kingston ( 2miles away) for shopping and the nearest (my nearest ) council tip is less than half a mile off my route. I have to trek to either Epsom or Leatherhead ( just short of the M25)
Folks living near the Leatherhead tip or beyond have go to Kingston.
A reciprocal arrangement for a few of these folk would seem logical but maybe too difficult to arrange.
I am not prepared to do frequent visits to the tip or stockpile stuff for months so.....
Fortunately I can restart using my daughter's permit for the Kingston tip.
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"Also because it is hard to promote a national recycling ethos when different rules apply"
That's true but the problem that demand and facilities varies form area to area so its inevitable that different rules are going to apply.
Whilst in theory householder sorting would be more efficient in practice it isn't as some people just won't do it .
People just don't like having a half dozen or more bins to sort If you living in small flat you haven't the room to start. Would you want to or be able to carefully sort steel tins from aluminium ones? Far better to say all tins go in the recycling bin and they are mechanically sorted down the line. Same with paper, do you want to sort the high grade stuff like magazines and news print from lower grade waste - best done at the sorting plant.
Areas with"single stream" waste collection tend to have far higher recycling rates than those with multiple bin arrangements.
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Our local recycling centre has gone bust!
Four long-lasting mysterious fires in the waste , smouldering for days - and now, surprise, surprise, there is a planning application for an incinerator based waste centre on the site.
(This is a County rather than District council decision, I should point out)
Interestingly, this latter proposal seems to be supported by John Mann, MP (Lab), whose wife just happens to be on our local district council's regeneration "cabinet".
Last edited by: Roger. on Mon 7 Jul 14 at 11:04
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What irritates me more more on the subject of recycling, is the idea that its a new thing...
..Where as, in fact it was done years ago, and with a lot less fuss and wastage...
Some examples..
Milk came in glass bottles - now plastic
Bread was wrapped in paper - now plastic.
Kettles were made of steel - they lasted for years, often having the element replaced once or twice - now plastic, and thrown away after a year or so when they stop working correctly.
many things were repaired - now replaced.. ie white goods, and car parts.
I'm thinking alternators, starter motors etc...
But also suspension components - often ball joints are part of an arm...
Also many anti roll bar bushes are now not serviced - they are moulded to the anti roll bar itself!
I could go on all-night...
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Very true, but not really about recycling.
There is a hierarchy of the thre Rs:
Reduce
Reuse
Recycle.
reduce = make things last longer, avoid the need to create waste in the first place
reuse = salvage the bits that still work, or pass on working but unwanted items to someone who can still use them
re-cycle = break up, melt down, pulp, etc and reclaim the materials
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>> Very true, but not really about recycling.
>> There is a hierarchy of the thre Rs:
>> Reduce
>> Reuse
>> Recycle.
>>
>> reduce = make things last longer, avoid the need to create waste in the first
>> place
>> reuse = salvage the bits that still work, or pass on working but unwanted items
>> to someone who can still use them
>> re-cycle = break up, melt down, pulp, etc and reclaim the materials
>>
That may be the idea, but as I said, a lot of that was done in the old day. ie milk bottles etc.
And further to one of my examples - antiroll bar bushes...
Reduce = the bushes were/are a common part to change. Now you have to change the bar itself.
WASTE!
Reuse = the bar WAS reused, just the bushes needed changing. WASTE!
recycle = the bushes are now bonded to the bar, hard to separate, loose bushes are just that, easily removable.... WASTE!!
Thats one example, out of many I could mention.
BTW, the bonded bushes don't last longer than the loose ones...
Last edited by: swiss tony on Tue 8 Jul 14 at 20:15
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"one of my examples - antiroll bar bushes"
You're correct on all counts, Tony, but surely we all realise that the real reason why they're made that way is because its cheaper for the manufacturer?
If we want longer-lasting, repairable, car (or kettles, or whatever) then we have to start demanding them from suppliers instead of the cheap and cheerful - or paying more attention to the 'clunk' a car door makes when we close it than how easy it is to repair.
As an aside, I wonder do Auto Bild still do the breakdown of common parts and repair prices in their used car tests, whereas our motoring press are more likely to tell you how impressed the Jones's will be by your purchase?
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Isn't "false religion" a tautology?
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Well - it ain't an oxymoron!
This is the only common cause Alanović :-)
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Is recycling the new false religion? - Manatee
