Recycling

[Dave Liquorice]

Fairly sure all the HWRC's that I'm likely to visit around here take paint. Check on the local counties web site what any individual center handles.

[Davey]

"....packaging of types that are not accepted for recycling." The annoying items in this category here are juice cartons, egg cartons, and 'pill strips', or whatever they're called, and all aerosols.

[Huge]

Harder than putting it in the single bin my council provide. Plus the storage space. Sorting waste should be done by your council.

[tim.....]

They say:

"Plastic containers, yoghurt pots, butter/margarine tubs, ice cream tubs, etc are not currently recycled as there is no viable market"

I made a mistake. They also take Aluminium foil, but that wasn't my beef about the metals

I had some waste steel piping that must be worth doing something with, but it went in the normal waste as I certainly wasn't going to walk to the council tip 2 miles away, with it.

[Muddymike]

Visiting an aunt earlier this year I was shocked to see the array of wheeled bins blocking the pavement outside her apartment block. Three of differing colours per apartment, all neatly numbered with the apartment number. As the block was built pre the advent of wheeled bins there is nowhere to store them so they live on the pavement with residents jostling them for pole position!

Mike

[Tim Streater]

So where do these bins live when it's not bin day?

Here we in the country and have space for the bins, but AIUI in Canterbury where some doors open onto the pavement they are doing weekly or have smaller bins as people don't have the space.

[tim.....]

I'm sure that they all (most) do

but even the most eco-friendly numpty can see that driving to the tip, just to dump a tin of paint, is environmentally silly

tim

[Tim Streater]

See my other post on this topic.

[Dave Liquorice]

They are around here but not kerbside.

Seems a bit odd, they go the card board or do your eggs come in plastic boxes (which I'd shove in the "hard plastics" box.

Agreed, general waste.

Again not kerbside but the HWRCs or local small recycling points take them.

[Java Jive]

[Tim Lamb]

There's a beef! Why are packaging manufacturers allowed to use non-recyclable material?

Also, how much trouble would it be to clearly identify the re-cycling route for containers?

Massage received on tips accepting paint. Just shows how often I venture in there. Pick-up trucks are usually welcomed by a posse of hi-vis jackets!

[John Williamson]

I reckon I must spend all of a minute extra per week making sure that stuff goes into the right bin of the four supplied.

If waste is sorted into separate bins as it's generated, it needs much less sorting than it would if it were all put into one bin for later sorting.

The materials gained by sorting at source are also better suited to recycling than stuff obtained by sorting the general waste stream, saving everybody except the initial thrower-away time, money and energy.

[John Williamson]

Do you never just happen to be passing it?

[Nightjar]

Not necessarily. Mixed recycling results in a significantly larger volume of materials being recycled. Many councils argue that the resulting higher income more than covers the additional cost of sorting it.

If I had that many different containers, I would have to walk outside to the bin area in my garden to use them. With mixed recycling I can simply have one extra bin indoors.

Colin Bignell

[Nightjar]

In many cases, they can be recycled, but they just are not being recycled by the company contracted by the LA. For example, Davey mentions juice cartons as something he cannot recycle, but I can.

How many people would understand it if they did?

Do we want to know that? :-)

Colin Bignell

[Clive George]

That's why I'd take it on my bike :-)

(I am probably quite lucky in where I live. Rural, but a mile from the local market town with all the services - tip, sorting office, supermarket, DIY indie, etc.)

[stuart noble]

Thus spake the late Andy Hall who proposed billing the council for his time, which he hinted would have been extremely costly because he was such a VIP. The idea of jumbling everything up and having some poor sod go through it because you can't be bothered is positively anti-social

[Andrew May]

But if there are 20m households in the UK that is the equivalent to 173 man-years of extra work per year. I know it is only a small amount on an individual basis but if they can use that sort of calculation to show that everybody's TV standby consumes a LOT of electricity then surely it works both ways,

Ok, it is Friday.

[Harry Bloomfield]

It happens that Tim Lamb formulated :

That would need local councils to agree some sort of recycling code between them, which is just not going to happen. They cannot even agree on what colour bin is used for garden and general waste. We have green for recycleable, brown for garden, black for general. Others use green for garden waste, which would seem to be the obvious.

A simple colour code on each item, with a list of aceptable colour codes on each bin, with an added description of items which cannot be coded would work.

[Nightjar]

We have a local scheme that uses it to redecorate homes for the poor, or whatever the PC word for poor is these days.

Colin Bignell