[OT] refuse - what's the point?

[Huge]

And if you use tap water, especially hot tap water, for this, you've just negated the point of recycling them.

[Lobster]

Whether that's true or not isn't the issue - unfortunately a sizeable minority of householders can't or won't sort their recyclables properly, so that if it is left to the householder, there is always going to be a corresponding percentage of incorrect material in any bulk collection; so much so that either whoever ultimately receives the stuff for processing either ends up sorting it again anyway, or it goes for landfill.

David

[Andrew Gabriel]

There's no market for it -- it's much easier to make new glass than to recycle glass contaminated with just about everything. "Driving to the bottle bank" is a euphemism for pointless recycling.

In a despirate effort to find something to do with mountains of broken glass, they've been grinding it up to use as substrate for roads and pavements instead of sand and gravel.

[Andrew Gabriel]

It doesn't. Bottle banks used to separate the glass as that was the only way it could be recycled. Since it isn't any longer recycled back into glass (there's no market for it), it all gets mixed together. If you look in the bottle bank holes, you may see the internal partitions have been removed so one section doesn't fill prematurely, and they're all mixed together.

[Newshound]

Yep. Particularly for people who rinse everything out with hot water

[John]

Ah, thanks Andrew. I didn't know that.

John

[John]

That is what I was thinking of. Seems better than quarrying.

[Mogga]

If you keep the clean dry stuff clean then it means you can recycle more. That'll be the paper and carboard.

The glass and cans must get crushed and melted so it shouldn't matter if they're very dirty as they can be washed or cleansed by the process. I do believe that if they want much higher levels of recycling then they can achieve it. They might have to find ways of dealing with some stuff that they can't currently (eg: disposalable nappies are recycled in Holland but not here)

My big rant was that on a street full of privet hedges we didn't have green recycling bins. Two years of asking and we got them but not before we'd had a false start with bins being delivered and then removed.

Me and a neighbour were going to be on a recycling group to help the council formulate ideas on how to improve rates. We even had a phone call confirming we'd be on it. We never got any further info and the pilot scheme that we could have helped with input is now about to start.

I did speak to one person about batteries - but they're considered too toxic to collect together at standard recycling locations so have to be taken to just one tip.

[Peter]

No 'or' involved, I read that over 50% of recycled collections go to landfill. (actually seem to remember the figure was 83%) My local managerial time and motion geniuses arrange for collection of cans and glass in the same container leaving some poor buggers to seperate each householders box at the cart. We now have seperate diesel spewers for household, garden waste, cans and glass, cardboard, newspapers and finally plastic. Mind you, the poor bugger above is reducing the diesel fumes of one truck, save that the can and glass truck is parked outside each house belching for some time while the sorting goes on. Somehow I do not believe that my local council is helping to save the planet. Having said that I dont believe my local council is helping anything at all.

Peter

>

[<me9]

Our's do recycle batteries, we have a supply of small (freezer bag sized) well labelled plastic bags into which we put batteries, and when full, put out with the recycle box. They also take glass.

Cardboard and plastic aren't recycled -- they signed a 30 year agreement a couple of years ago to supply waste to a new (PFI??) incinerator -- they have to maintain a certain calorific value in the rubbish used for its input.

[Frank Erskine]

A few weeks ago our local council started some sort of scheme for depositing batteries at libraries and other council premises, and this was all hyped up via the local evening paper as the way forward, to save the world and all that.

About a fortnight later apparently somebody took some batteries to one of the collection points and was turned away on the grounds that 'this had just been a one-off'...

[Derek Geldard]

10 years ago prior to the current recycle initiative the tenants in our small office block used to donate their flattened tri-wall cardboard cartons to the delivery driver of one of the tenants.

A full luton transit van load of flattened cartons stuffed full used to raise for him the magnificent sum of a fiver. One day he started a spell of sickness and the scheme died for all time.

Want to change it ? Why not follow Gordon Mc Shite-Features example and put a swingeing tax or two on wood pulp ?

Glass is totally different to cans.

Cans can be very easily recycled. All metals can be recycled / purified by melting, and we've done it for centuries.

Glass cannot be easily be re-cycled. The various grades of special glasses such as Pyrex, Monax, etc. cannot be included with general purpose run of the mill glass of current origin, the resulting glass would not run through our current machinery, and nobody can guarantee they won't appear in the waste glass stream offered for recycling.

Some glasses have ingredients which are incompatible with food use, lead, cadmium etc. They also would spoil batches of recycled glass. There can be no guarantees about the quality of glass taken in glass recycling centres.

Coloured glass can not be recycled such that it may be included with un-coloured glass to produce new clear glass. Sorting coloured glass from clear glass is not workable at all from the cost point of view. The controls applied to the donation of glass at recycling centres cannot of themselves guarantee the purity of the glass donated to a workable level, or currently to any level at all.

The raw materials of glass are dirt cheap anyway, because glass is actually made of dirt.

Recycled glass can be crushed to make "Cullet" the only use for which is in roadmaking. However the road surfaces it makes wears faster than traditional road surfaces and would not be not economic here. There is no rational market for Cullet in this country.

"The Council". Eh ? It's like pissing up a rope isn't it.

DG

[Tim Southerwood]

Peter coughed up some electrons that declared:

And that's the insanity - metal is trivial to automate the separation thereof. Electromagents for ferrous and linear-motor technology to kick off non ferrous at the processing facility. 35 years ago, I saw a childrens' programme that showed an electromagent sucking up cans of the conveyor belt at a dustcart processing facility as standard practise. The linear motor technology was shown on Tomorrows World about 20 years ago. As for the rest, burn the bloody stuff and generate electricity, then landfill the ash and glass.

Tim

[Frank Erskine]

ISTR that a few years ago Stockton-on-Tees council (not too far from you (or is it your LA?)) accepted that recycling was their problem rather than that of their inhabitants and got geared up to separate (vt.) non/recyclable stuff.

The guy who introduced this has probably 'been transferred to another department' or retired due to ill-health (!).

[clot]

Mainly due to NIMBYism. At a plant I visited in Hamburg, the sewage sludge was dewatered in the same way as it is in many works in the UK and then transferred to another plant (on the same site by a conveyor) operated by either RWE or Eon and termed the power station - i.e. not an incinerator. The local public were very supportive of this power station. RWE/Eon encouraged other organisations with comparable materials to dispose of their waste to the power station to maximise the use of the plant. The environmental controls over emissions are precisely the same as those over incinerators in the UK. There, it seems that "Power Station" is not seen as a euphemism for "Incinerator". It seems to me to be a logical outlet for mixed organic wastes or say treated timber that cannot find another secondary use.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Better in what respect? It's all done at a loss, but just to keep the recycle figures up so councils don't get bigger fines. You are paying a premium for this pointless glass recycling in your taxes. I am very much in favour of recycling, when it makes real sense.

[<me9]

It is.

They seem to do most of the separation by hand at the kerbside (as in other areas), with almighty clattering from the bottles. Then the machine makes other strange noises. Good job they follow the wheely bin emptiers by several hours, arriving around lunchtime.

If he had at least one brain cell he would have moved on from SBC!

[Dave Gordon]

Did you check nothing was stolen from round the back of your house while this maybe-bogus survey was being carried out? Its called distraction burglary.

[Stuart B]

Where I go they have totally seperate containers for each colour of glass.

[Andy Dingley]

For an example of the problems with that, look at news stories from the Walker area of Newcastle and the contamination problems when incinerator ash was used to make paths.

You can argue that current rules are excessively strict. Maybe they are. But as things stand, it's a very difficult problem to get a waste incinerator running under the emissions rules and you certainly can't be careless with landfilling the remnants.