Recycling - how do others cope?

[David Hearn]

"Producing glass using recycled cullet is more energy efficient than producing glass from basic raw materials (typically by about 30%)."

"Except in more remote areas, where transport costs may be dominant, the economics are usually in favour of recycling. The key issue is one of cullet quality."

"The UK production of glass fibre insulation is around 150,000 tonnes per year and currently all the glass fibre manufacturers are using recycled glass as a feedstock."

"Currently about 30% of glass melted was originally cullet and so the re-melting process is fairly waste free."

"It is estimated that there is approximately twice the capacity for clear and amber cullet usage within the container glass industry than is currently collected."

So - plenty of uses for cullent (not just what you'd expect) along with currently twice the capacity of clear/amber cullet compared to what they're collecting. THEY NEED MORE!

D

[chris French]

But are all the externalities factored in? - in respect of the discussion here I suspect not.

[chris French]

In message , mich writes

anyway, burning paper isn't adding to the net amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, seeing as most of it made from conifer trees. And plenty of new trees are being grown to replace those cut down.

[chris French]

In message , mich writes

Depends on where you live and on the exact scheme operating it seems.

In some parts of Leeds (such as ours) there is 'Green Bin' scheme for recycling.

We get a green wheelie bin as well as a black one.

In the green one we can put:

all sorts of papers, magazines, telephone catalogues etc. though not envelopes (something to do with the glue and the recycling process I think) and cardboard.

Plastic bottles of all sorts

Cans and Aluminium foil, etc.

They ask you not to put in glass bottle -I have a plastic box by the green bin that they go in.

It is collected monthly by what looks like a standard refuse type truck and taken to a sorting station (and in answer to a previous post - yes this place does exist - I've seen it)

While a pre-sorting system sounds good, I have to say, having taken part in one before, I do much prefer this from my POV.

I don't have to have different bags/boxes cluttering up the place - ok if we did I'd probably manage it ok, we have the space. But if I lived in one of Leeds many back-to-backs? It's bad enough then finding place for a wheelie bin.

[Huge]

Err, yes, but I doubt they use supermarket bottle bank cullet.

Blimey. I stand corrected. That's what you get for reading the popular media.

(As it happens we recycle glass anyway, because the bottles are too heavy to go in the plastic sacks, but that's beside the point.)

[Huge]

Precisely so. Once it become economic to recycle stuff, then it's entirely sensible. Until then, it's just a waste of energy.

[Huge]

I agree, and on both sides. Are all those 4x4s driving down the bottle bank included?

[Mary Fisher]

A daughter lives in one of those and has both green and brown bins. Space for them isn't too much of a problem because they have a small garden, which many Leeds back to backs have. Those who don't have to have the bins on the street - or in the old yards which were built to house lavatories and middens. I know because I was brought up in one of those - a scullery house now demolished - with the yard next door and spent the first years of our marriage - with three babies - in a one up and down straight onto the street but with a yard down the street, also now demolished.

One of our wheelie bins, while taller, has a very different footprint from the old dustbins. Its square format makes it more space-saving though.

You can buy wheelie bins in most parts of the country, I understand. That could be another solution to the OP's 'problem'. I suspect though that he wouldn't want to bother taking his rubbish to a bin.

Mary also Leeds and not far from

[BillR]

I aggree. I used to dutifully put my recycling in the green bin provided (all in one scheme) and took my bottles to the bank. Then I heard over 1000 tons of recycled stuff in my county (Hampshire) had been seen dumped in a landfill anyway because they didn't know what to do with it. Then the council put the tax up some enormous percentage, so I thought stuff it...

Another problem with these schemes is if you have a small flat or similar with no garden, where do you store all these seperate bags/bins?

[mich]

Thats not actually fair. I would take the stuff out to the bin if I had room close to the house.

However, I sort of draw the line at having to buy three bins ( one for each bag) and from which I will have to remove the bag and lug it 200 yards down to the curbside. However, in my case it would have to be 600 years to the curbside as the nearest I could get the bins in would be 400 yards (at the end of the rear garden).

But I suspect your comment is based on your bias, not on the facts. Anyone who denies me the right burn paper on a fire on the grounds I am polluting the atmosphere would have to be biased.

I simply wonder what kind of ecological wonder of a home you live in, what kind of ecologically friendly heating and power source you have ( wind generation or solar panels perhaps?), who composts everything, has reed beds to convert their sewerage? Who puts out less than one black bag of waste for landfill a week, that you can criticise me without compunction.

At least I am honest enough to say I will not, rather than keep stum and not do it anyway. Most in my position would simply let you think they were wonderful recyclers. I am not. I will only do it if I am not inconvenienced too much and I can afford the outlay.

[David Hearn]

Seems that there's too much green cullet though... we import so many green bottles of wine/lager and use so little of it ourselves. Maybe that's what gets used for road surfaces? ;)

D

[Dave Liquorice]

Depends how big you make the picture. Use of recycled materials reduces the demand for new raw ones, this delays the time when raw ones become uneconomic to use.

At present we still rely very heavily on raw materials and don't have the facilities or, in some cases, the technology to remove this reliance on raw materials. The time "bought" by using uneconomic recycled materials now can be used to develop the recycling infrastructure and the technology that *will* required in the future.

[Owain]

"Chris Hodges" wrote | btw I was in Japan recently, where they have real space problems. | You have to sort rubbish into compostable, combustable, recyclables, | etc. At least one sort is collected almost daily.

"collected almost daily" is a very big difference from "once a fortnight"

Owain

[Chris Hodges]

It is (also the green seems to get a lot of brown added at some stage). I wonder why glass fibre insulation isn't greenish though.

[Chris Hodges]

It's probably more energy efficient or produces less CO2 to burn the the newspapers in a fireplace/wood-burning stove rather than take them away, and fetch back something else to burn. If you're stuck on solid fuel of course

[Bluestars]

Are you sure? The problem is quantifying all those externalities in money terms. Environment is one of those externalities in the waste equation yet is hard to quantify in money terms.

A special sort of modern domestic refuse is abandoned and burnt out cars. Without factoring in the environment cost, the economics for the local authority would say they should be left there. However if they were around your home you might think there was more to life's values than strict economics.

Roger

[mike ring]

"Mary Fisher" wrote in news:3fae2eee$0$8568 $ [e-mail]:

You would't get far round here with a wheelie bin, we haven't got the right sort of dustcart

mike r

[Chris Hodges]

That's what I thought when I was out there.

[geoff]

In message , chris French writes

I think you are confusing two different things here

Sustainable forests and releasing CO2 into the atmosphere

[chris French]

In message , geoff writes

Not at all - though possibly not phrased it very well on re-reading.

By referring to new trees being grown, I meant that as long as more tree's are being grown (to produce future paper) to absorb the CO2 released (in the long term) there is not A net change in the CO2 level in the atmosphere do to the paper being burnt (or otherwise decomposed for that matter)