OT - effectiveness of recycling?

[David]

Just something that has been knocking about in my mind for a while.

With the current domestic recycling there are some plastics which can be recycled and some which can't.

For example, moulded plastic food trays are marked as recyclable, but the label often says that the plastic covering film is not. For meats, bacon, and many other foods the covering film is sealed to the rim of the plastic tray, so that it is virtually impossible to remove all the film. So the tray is recyclable but with a small amount of non-recyclable plastic fused to the rim.

Does this render the whole thing non-recyclable, and thus destined for land fill? Or is a small percentage of contamination acceptable? Or is most of the stuff we put in blue bins just for show and goes to land fill anyway?

Cheers

Dave R

[Tim Streater]

According to our local councillor, who was responsible for overseeing the introduction of the recycling regime we have now, anything hard plastic can be recycled (by the public, that is), and the filmy stuff (and expanded polystyrene) goes to landfill. So rip as much as you can off the container and then put it in the recycling.

She's visited the recycling centres, and it's all gone through anyway to check, which is unsurprising as stuff with the recycling mark also has that number on it to indicate what sort of plastic it is.

Given that the councils want to reduce what goes to landfill as much as possible, they'd rather the plastic went into the recycling container, such as in the case of your food tray, even if it gets thrown out later.

I do our village website and made this page on the topic:

[Andrew Gabriel]

In most cases, small amounts of contamination reduce the value of the reclaimed plastic - it means there are some things it can't be used for, but less critical things it still can.

Same with paper. Some councils required all plastic removed including plastic envelope windows, etc. When there is a glut of recycled paper, theirs is the only type which can be sold.

In both cases, incineration is still an option when there's no market for reuse.

OTOH, the more effort you require people to put in to recycling separation, the percentage of recycled waste drops dramatically. Automated separation at recycling plant is now quite advanced, and uses things like electric fields to separate different types of plastic bottles.

My recycle bin probably fills at least twice as fast as my non- recycle bin.

[tim.....]

so employee "professional" to sort it properly, relying on amateurs to guess is just dumb

tim

[Tim Streater]

Tesco's gratin dauphinois used to be a plastic container with a film lid. Interesting to note it's now a clip-on lid so both parts recyclable without the possible contamination issue.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Some councils did kerbside sorting by trained staff. I think that's all gone now - the quality of the sorted results were good, but the labour cost was prohibitive and almost certainly outweighed any additional value of the separated recyclables.

Like I said, automated sorting can separate out most of the plastic types nowadays, although that may not yet be operating in all areas.

[Brian Gaff]

From recent news I've read most plastic is in small thin fibres and buried in the ocean sediment, where it causes problems for life which filters though the detritus for food, clogging up their filters.

However, I understand that the film stuff is only bonded at the outside and this is cropped off. Still there are lots of things that have multiple materials in them, cassette tapes for example, and some drinks containers which are cardboard with a silver substance glued inside. Brian

[tim.....]

of course it's not cost effective

for every 5 minutes of sorting they are doing 5 minutes of collecting and 5 minutes of travelling. It needs to be arranged so that trained sorters sort and the other task are done by other staff

I must have missed that bit. My initial comment wasn't referring to the use of manual labour over technology, I was referring to the practice of LAs to expect residents to be qualified sorters and then having the gall to try and fine you if you turn out to be useless at it

tim

[Lobster]

On 20 Dec 2014, Tim Streater grunted:

And what about those bloody boxes for stuff like quiche that have windows, and it says 'cardboard carton recyclable; window not recyclable', so you're expected to grovel about, picking off the plastic.

It's the wide available products like these which to my mind demonstrate the lack of will to seriously address recycling

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its all a green con anyway.

no one uses council compost because its likely contaminated. nearly all waste ends up as landfill anyway despite what you do to it

[Sailor]

The Natural Philosopher wrote

Really

[rbel]

Our recycling uses a hybrid arrangement. Householders sort into 4 bins - paper, plastic packaging and tins; glass, cardboard, foil and drink cartons; food waste; all non-recyclable waste.

Then there is a kerbside check by the collection crew - a driver and 2 operatives.

[polygonum]

They have got it up to five round here.

[Andrew Gabriel]

That's quite a common arrangement, although food waste and/or garden waste vary quite a bit. Garden waste is sometimes charged extra, although councils which offered it when this government came to power are not allowed to increase the charge (or to start charging if they didn't do so beforehand).

Some councils tried even more separation, but found it causes recyling percentages to drop. In one area I visit regularly which has the separate food waste, I noticed almost no one uses it. It doesn't exist in my area.

Battery collection is sometimes separate, because they are not supposed to allow that to go into landfill anymore. OTOH, all shops which sell batteries also have to take back old ones now, and even before that, many companies provided battery recycling bins for their workers.

[Andrew Gabriel]

South Beds (back when it existed) got a government grant to buy all the garden compost wheelie bins (probably 15 years ago?), but they made a profit from the collection, composting, and sale of garden compost.

Councils which charged for garden waste collection generally got far too small participation for it to be a profitable business.

[Tim Watts]

Rother has this year switched from free to chargeable garden waste.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Interesting. Reading (and other places) tried to do that, and goverment told them the charge would count against them as a council tax increase, and so they abandoned the idea and it remains free AFAIK.

Although collection of garden waste in Reading was free from the beginning, residents had to buy the garden recycling bin, so the take-up was not universal by any means.

[Tim Watts]

Our charge is reasonably nominal £25 per annum and includes the standard sized wheelie bin.

Uptake has been partial here. For me it was a no brainer as I have a long hawthorn hedge and clippings are not practical to compost[1], would rip my car to bits if I shoved it in for the dump and I fill my brown bin about 75% of the year (fortnightly collections).

[1] I have wondered if a chipper would work - but hawthorn is so wiggly and stiff I wonder if it would even be possible to feed it into a domestic shredder at any sane rate - unlike say long thin sticks of ash.

My house is not bonfire friendly - short all round garden - whenever I have tried to burn materials I have smoked someone out in short order.

[jrwalliker]

I know a farmer who buys it for 50p per tonne. There are lots of bits of plastic bag in it, but they don't cause him a problem.

John

[Bill Wright]

The glass gets sent to China for use as hardcore, at a massive cost in CO2 emissions.

Bill