Recycling.. Why bother?

[krooton]

An episode of Pen & Teller: Bullcrap (swearie name not allowed here) looked at recycling from an interesting angle.

Apparently only aluminium is actually worth recycling due to the cost and energy expended recycling other materials.

Also, it's the need for paper that promotes tree growth. It's farming and such that does more damage to forests than paper usage.

 

[Burnsy2023]

Agreed go back to old glass milk bottles, we seem to have gone backwards.

Reuse is a lot more efficient than recycling and remoulding. It annoys me that we've gone away from that.

I like recycling, not because I'm particularly green or enviromnetally conscious, but that I really dislike needless wastage. It just seems silly to me, but maybe that's my subconscious German mind wanting to be efficient.

 

[Goberpiles316]

I run the waste collection in my area, and we have a full audit trial for what we recycle.

Items tend to only go abroad when they cannot be recycled in this country. We cannot recycle plastic such as yogurts and butter pots but we take glass, plastic bottles, foil, Tetra Paks, paper and card into one bin which we collect every two weeks and the rest gets picked up weekly.

The recycling gets taken to a MRF which sorts it into stacks which get taken off to be recycled.

Over the next 10 years we have signed up to take all the refuse that cannot be recycled and placed through a plan that will further take out items such as food and other material which will be turned into fuel with the small amount left over put to landfill.

Only other item I would mention is that most areas will have a District and County Council. The County are responsible for disposing of the waste and will tell the District who are responsible for collectiong it what they can and cannot pick up.

So it is not always as clear cut as my Council is crap, we for one would like to take every item via the recycle route it just is not possible. But we must be doing something right as we have a 95% satisfaction rate and are the best rated in West Sussex.

 

[Burnsy2023]

That's another thing, I want Southampton City Council to recycle tetrapaks, it seems such a waste to bin them.

 

[Kobrakai]

I never recycle.

 

[semi-pro waster]

Also, why is your title "pUnderboss"?

Have you never heard one of Huddy's jokes? They're quite special.

The thing that bugs me most about recycling at the moment is that the boxes we've got for putting our recycling in either keep going missing or returning broken. As for the recyling itself, it takes me maybe an extra minute or two a day to sort the stuff so that it goes to recycling rather than just straight in the bin which is no great hardship at all. I'd hope that most or all of it is actually getting recycled but even if not the extra 'effort' of sorting out the rubbish isn't enough to mean it is a hassle.

 

[Doonhamer]

That's another thing, I want Southampton City Council to recycle tetrapaks, it seems such a waste to bin them.

Forget to mention that when I was sucking off my local council before. They also recycle Tetrapaks.

 

[LordSplodge]

The human race as a whole needs to reduce the amount of waste it produces in both terms of rubbish and wasted energy. This is pretty much a given otherwise we will end up ****ing where we eat if you know what I mean.

Unfortunately the people in charge of dreaming up how this is to be done are all severely mentally retarded:

Why is there no standard system? Sometimes even across a city there are different schemes.
Why are some items not recyclable? Should not pressure be put on manufacturers to use only recyclable materials?
Why don't we have more reusable items?

The list goes on...

Attitude change and technology are the only two things that will stop the human race from dooming itself. Going back to the dark ages like some environmental nuts want to do is not an option nor is the rampant NIMBYism that you see on the news.

/end rant

 

[BrightonBelle]

At work we have loads of cardboard boxes to recycle but our FM guy said it costs more to get picked up by a recycle truck then it does to chuck it.

Likewise with eating healthily - why is a salad £4 odd when you can get a burger for £3?!

So wrong!

BB x

 

[johnny6]

3 wheelie bins here

Black for general rubbish
Green for garden waste
Red for recycling (plastic bottles, metal, paper and card)

Simple system which doesn't take any more time to sort, and has cut my houses black bin rubbish by 70-75% I reckon. Whether my council actually do anything with the stuff in the green/red bins however I've got no idea.

 

[gillywibble]

3 bins here as well. I no longer need to get in and jump on the main rubbish bin (fun though it was).

 

[The Halk]

Being Devil's advocate here...

With a target of 2011, is it possible the councils have decided that it's unreasonable to have a sudden switch over. So they're staging it. Having people separate the stuff, getting used to it, making sure that the majority is separated, having separate collections before they actually start recycling it?

 

[Smitho3]

Same company collects from my work. We have 2 general waste bins and 1 cardboard only bin. The general waste bin has everything from food to broken glass in it. They put all three bins in the same refuse lorry and compact it all together. When asked they said "it all gets sorted out the other end mate"

Does it ********, if they expect me to beleive that they compact general refuse and recylcing together, empty it all out, seperate the recycling from the general waste and then move the recycling away to a seperate facility to then be sorted into its constituant parts then they are insane!