Rubbish disposal, government regs and local councils

[lynd]

Has anyone else had the experience of a local council getting sh*tty because you have asked them to take away a fridge? They are charging me £20 anyway, but thats not the issue, I was made to feel really guilty for daring to get rid of my old appliance and get a new one at all!

I heard of recycling but this is silly.

In 1977 I brought my fridge. Its now knackered. Doesnt cool and needs to be replaced. So I replaced it. Council officer told me I should not have replaced it - I am an ecologically unfriendly person for getting rid of an old appliance!

What am I supposed to do?

Ditto experience when I went to the amenity tip/ recycling tip with my old microwave ( bought 1981). Old microwave has a hole in it. It is rusted through. I got a new one. They told me I should not be dumping my old one because I was making waste! Unfortunately I took my old knackered Vax ( bought 1987) at the same time. The motor is knackered and it doesnt suck. Apparently I am supposed to repair it ( I was told by the repair people it was not economic to do so!).

We have got to the point now where you are not allowed to throw anything away. You are not allowed to burn anything. You are not allowed to dump anything. Should I rename my house Steptoes Backyard?

So what am I supposed to do? Not replace old appliances? Go without altogether and live a life of Victorian * luxury* with no mod cons?

[lynd]

Fwiw, I might add, I am getting so p*ssed off with all this eco stuff that I am getting to the point where I think sod you all and it will last my lifetime ( which it probably will!)

Shouting at people for changing fridge's every 25 years is not the way to go here. I would have understood if I was doing the designer thing and throwing out goods because they didn't fit in with the colour of my dogs coat!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Complain in writing to his superior.

[Andy Hall]

IME, council waste departments seem to attract two main types of people:

- Those who are managing an outsource contractor and taking phone calls from customers complaining about bins not being emptied etc. I had occasion to have a "discussion" with one of these some while ago when the collection policy was changed from one of collecting bins at the house to bins must be at edge of property. I have quite a long drive and it was a PITA. Their opening line was that this was a health and safety issue and that the operatives weren't insured to go on people's property. I didn't buy it. Eventually I spoke to the manager who admitted that it was a time and cost issue in their contract negotiation. Fine. I don't have a problem with that - they could have simply told the truth in the first place.

- The socialist jobsworths on a crusade and who are unemployable anywhere else. Poorly paid and realising they control a resource that you want, they will play it for all it's worth. There is a very simple solution to this nonsense. Tell them that they are not empowered by their employer to make social or any other judgments and are there to implement the service that their employer says that they provide. Further tell them that you expect that to be provided expeditiously, you will pay the defined charge and that is that. Threaten to escalate the issue if they don't co-operate. The do it anyway. Write to the chief executive of the council and your councillor. These people need to be weeded out of these positions.

Yes of course it is.

You use the procedure that the council has to provide and you pay for it. That's it.

These places are another magnet for jobsworths, although most at these places are into selling stuff on the side. The technique is to let them have their say, ignore it completely and then ask where you put the item, thanking them for their co-operation.

I think that the answer is simple:

- Recycle when it is convenient and economically sensible to do so.

- Make product choices based on ecological considerations provided that again they are economically sensible and also products are fit for purpose.

- Expect to pay for disposal. Having said that, increasingly manufacturers will be expected to play a part in facilitating or paying for that. Of course, the customer will pay in the end.

[graham]

The whole recycling system is a joke.

Some types of waste Councils do not want. Other types of waste they really do want.

The Government has set local authorities a target based on weight in respect of the recycling of certain types of waste. This does not encourage a local authority to recycle in the most effective way.

For example, take the recycling of glass and aluminium.

The UK now produces so much recycled green glass that we sell the excess to China. However, we produce insufficient aluminium in the UK that we have to import it from Europe.

Solution: We need to encourage greater recycling of aluminium. However, this will not particularly help a local authority to meet their recycling weight target, because aluminium is considerably lighter in weight than glass. In order to meet weight targets, a local authority is more likely to push glass and paper recycling.

Graham

[bland]

From next year councils will be fined for exceeding quotas of rubbish just buried instead of recycled. The figures run into several hundred thousand pounds.

The councils are between a rock and a hard place. So blame it all on central government.

bland

[pi55ed off]

Our local council [NW lancs] gets rid of approx 1 skip full of bicycles a month. these go for scrap when asked about re;cycling them for repair and resale they quoted H&S isssues. BO!!OCKS. It doesn't stop the local council employed skip rats running their own private scheme, routing through binbags for stock for their car boot sales!!!! IMHO one step above a pikey!

[Huge]

You've never heard of the Rule of Two Problems, have you?

"There are two kinds of problems in the world. My problems and your problems. I don't give a tuppeny-halfpenny damn about your problems."

IOW, I don't give a toss about the council's problems.

[Owain]

I don't know when it comes in, but I think WEE (waste electrical equipment) regulations mean the seller of the new one will have to take the old one back.

My council takes fridges free because of the ozone but charges for everything else.

I would be inclined to take fridge outside, cut tubes and let gas out (caution may be under pressure), saw fridge into pieces, put pieces in wheeliebin, bugger the environment.

Owain

[Andrew Gabriel]

A friend of mine used to do PAT testing for an organisation which would try to recycle washing machines, fridges, freezers, etc which people chuck out. They were collected up and where necessary repaired using parts from other ones, and then tested and provided to people who couldn't afford to buy such items themselves.

The EU recycling regs completely killed this recycling activity. They inevitably produce a large amount of white goods waste (non- repairable machines raided for parts), and the cost of dealing with that would have required selling the repaired machines at near to the new prices. The fact that they were actually reducing the amount of waste by taking in more chucked-out machines than they produced and recycling them was irrelevant.

The phrase "driving to the bottle bank" is commonly used as a reference to the futility of some types of recycling. If you have to drive to a bottle bank, it's more environmentally friendly to drop the glass in your regular landfill rubbish.

[mogga]

If you were shouted at you should most definately complain. It is not in any council employees description to shoout at members of the public (unless their job is chief of shouting at people)

[david lang]

I'd remind them that it is simply their job to provide the services you pay (no doubt) huge sums of council tax for. It is not their job to make social or any other judgments (as Andy Hall put so well).

Dave

[John Armstrong]

Or town crier

[Huge]

I should point out at the juncture that Bedford Council and their Direct Services Division have been nothing but helpful and constructive with the problems we've had with wheely bins and our blocked drains. And they do *really* cheap TV drain surveys.

And the drain guy has suggested (twice) that I buy a decent set of locking steel drain rods, which I collected from Plumbcentre this very morning. It being cheaper to have a set of decent rods than pay Bedford DSD Contracting £41 per half hour+VAT to retrieve the crappy, snapped off plastic DIY shed ones. Again.

[Andrew Gabriel]

It just got postponed again in the UK, IIRC from Janurary 2006 to June 2006, because no one's even remotely ready for it (and I think it's WEEE). Government hasn't yet started setting up its register of manufacturers/importers, AFAIK. However, much of the rest of the EU is in the same position.

It means the manufacturer (or importer) is responsible for disposal. In practice, it may be implemented as you suggest.

[Owain]

I thought it was too, then thought it was one to many Es.

Between Part P and WEEE we seem to have an increase in piss-poor legislation.

Owain

[Dave Liquorice]

Presumably only when making a special journey just to the bottle bank.

If the journey is going to be made anyway, the extra fuel that the added weight of a few bottles are going to use is minimal.

[Dave Liquorice]

Didn't the place you bought the new one from have a (free?) scheme to take away the old one? Plenty of "exchanged" fridges out the back of Comet, Carlisle with large red stickers on wibbling something about the enviroment.

[John Rumm]

We had a glass/cans/paper collection bin provided recently. The idea being you collect such items in this bin and it gets emptied on the same day as the bins every other week.

So far so good. But I do wonder how much environmental cost is there in everyone using now washing up cans and bottles that would previously have just been binned, on the grounds that they don't want soiled containers sitting about in the open air for a fortnight?

[Frank Erskine]

We've had the same thing for a while now. They expect you to cut windows out of envelopes before "recycling" them. Sod that.

I rarely use the recycling box - I walk a couple of hundred yards to Sainsbury's where there are recycling bin-type-thingies.

And I rinse jars out, but never wash up cans.