OT Paper recycling question

[Tim]

Our council has just announced that rather than have a separate glass collection, we can now put all our bottles in our general recycling bin along with the cans, paper, cardboard, plastic bottles etc.

On the one hand this is more convenient for me but I had always thought at broken glass shards were a major headache for paper recyclers. So, is this a good thing or a reflection of the lack of value of waste paper which may now be either not being recycled or perhaps going though some less discriminating recycling process?

The council also gave up sorting glass quite some time ago which also concerned me a bit given the lack of value to recyclers of unsorted glass.

Tim

[Nightjar]

Oddly enough, a mixed waste system can end up recovering more recyclables than a segregated one. It is much less bother for the householder to drop everything into one big bin than to sort it and put it into multiple bins, so more people recycle.

Colin Bignell

[Chris J Dixon]

Our council tells us that shredded paper is OK in our recycling bins. When I visited the sorting facility recently, it was clear that the screens they used to separate small stuff for landfill would pass any paper shreddings.

I asked about this, and they said that I was correct, but they felt that it was psychologically better to encourage recycling.

Chris

[David WE Roberts]

Probably also more cost efficient as you have to sort 'segregated' waste anyway to take out all the things that have ben incorrectly included.

[Owain]

My local council has kerbside segregation - the binmen sort the contents of the one blue box into different 'skips' on the back of a flatbed trailer.

I already segregate paper, glass and cans into separate plastic bags to make it easier/neater but most people don't.

Owain

[F]

Our's says 'no shredded paper'. They say it gums up their machinery. They also don't accept glass in the recycling bin. It seems like they expect us to burn petrol to take it to them!

[Dave Liquorice]

Same here one box for papper cans and glass. Operative sorts into the small skips along the side of the wagon. When they are full they lift up and deposit their contents into the body of the truck.

[Andrew Gabriel]

The collected glass isn't recycled - it's not viable to do so. It's ground up and used as foundations for roads and the like. It's a way of burying it in the ground without attracting landfill tax.

[Bill Wright]

It's all bollocks anyway. They use CO2 to send the glass to China where they use it as hardcore. Total nonsense.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

So they treat us like children! Bollocks to it! I will continue to subvert their rules.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

The best strategy is to put it in the car, take an unusual route to work, and fly tip. Why should we play their silly game?

Bill

[Bill Wright]

The whole thing is down to politics. All the guys who know just pay lip service. The cost of all this greeny bollocks is astronomic.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

,

In China.

Bill

[Andy Burns]

Where can I buy one of these CO2 powered bulk transporters?

[Huge]

,

Actually, a lot of it is used to make glassfibre insulation.

[Chris J Dixon]

And also the choices made by the company to which it has been outsourced. Ours is a PFI for (IIRC) 25 years.

Chris

[Paul D Smith]

Same here in N.London. But in the same breath they encourage us to shred bills etc to avoid identity theft :-(.

But at least our waste is no longer driven all the way to Birmingham for sorting - or at least they tell us it's not.

Paul DS

[Martin Brown]

Our council already do that and they have a collection wagon that looks like Heath Robinson designed it. The poor guys who work on it have to manually sort the mixed junk into the right skips on the side. When one skip is full a crazy system of hydraulics and levers yanks it all high into the air and lobs it into the divided lorry sections. On a windy day the behaviour of large plastic lemonade bottles is not ideal. I always wonder what would happen if they did this underneath a phone or electricity line.

They do have a separate paper feed in a blue bag, but cans, glass and plastic bottles are all in one mixed box. I pity the guys sorting it.

They are going through the motions to score the %age recycling brownie points. To be fair our council does run very good recycling tips. The thing that kerbside collections highlight for me is how much cardboard there is (they don't collect that as it has no marginal value at all).

[Mathew Newton]

Reading that I couldn't help but picture what could easily be a scene in the Simpson's whereby the items are being sorted into individual skips but then all dumped back together into one big container in the middle of the truck... ;-)

Mathew

[F]

As has been reported 'in real life' on multiple occasions from multiple locations for glass. Householder carefully sorts into different colours then, when the lorry arrives to load up at the collection point, it's all tipped into the one large space in the back.