- This topic has 40 replies, 34 voices, and was last updated 7 years ago by mikewsmith.
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16 Million Plastic Bottles!!!
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cloudnineFree Member
British households fail to recycle a ‘staggering’ 16m plastic bottles a day..
Yet another Depressingly stupid waste.I cant even imagine what that many bottles would look like.
trail_ratFree MemberTbh I can understand why some slip through.
We get no kerbside recycling.
I do a run to the tip with all my recycling. Only 1bag of non recyclable and compostables (as i refuse to have a compost heap/rat magnet as I do not grow anything) goes in the black bin.
2 of the neighbours have no car. Their waste goes in the bin when I’m not about to take it down the tip…..6months of the year really.
mrmoFree Membergo into a town centre, how many of the waste bins are segregated and how many are all in one?
footflapsFull MemberOur office and gym have a single bin, loads of plastic bottles don’t get recycled.
wilburtFree MemberFunnily enough I was talking to to visitor to our home about this last week, we both go through the bin after other family members and separate out recyclable stuff.
He’s bought a fancy bin with multiple departments to try and get them doing it themselves.As above though, I offices and commercial properties who generate way more waste than we do and don’t recycle, that’s probably a bigger opportunity.
n0b0dy0ftheg0atFree MemberI’ve yet to see any communal public place bins (emptied by council) along Southampton’s roads that have segregated recycled from non-recycled. Pretty tragic after all this time.
13thfloormonkFull MemberI’ve done a couple of big coastal backpacking trips in the last couple of years, one in Canada, one in Scotland.
Both passed through some fairly remote coastline and beaches, all of which were littered to some degree or another by empty plastic bottles, the majority of which looked like bottled water bottles.
Got me thinking, other than the initial administrative hassle, why not charge a deposit for each bottle, say 50p? I guess it would reduce sales slightly (impulse sales from people who aren’t carrying the extra 50p) but it would force people to take them back.
Just too much effort for the government, too much lobbying from the manufacturers?
muppetWranglerFree MemberLocal council (Hillingdon) is pretty good with recycling. Weekly kerbside collections for garden waste, food waste and recyclable materials. Plastics, metals and paper all go in the same bag which makes it a bit easier for residents. There’s a few recycling bins dotted around town centres and battery recycling in the local libraries.
If your council doesn’t do that as a minimum I reckon you should be asking them why.
neilthewheelFull MemberThe UK is shit at most things so why should this be any different?
CountZeroFull MemberWhen I was a kid all bottles of pop had a refundable deposit, we used to hunt for bottles to get the deposit to supplement our pocket-money.
I see no practical reason for not having deposits on all plastic bottles, regardless of contents, maybe 25p, which might encourage kids to go scavenging bottles for extra pocket money, might even encourage adults to keep bottles when empty until they’ve got a large bagful and get a few quid back for beer money, or cigs or maybe a free lunch.seosamh77Free Memberthe ganjy run we used to call that, 8p for a glass barrs bottle! used to chap peoples doors in the scheme asking for their empties!
brakesFree Memberat work we have bins for general waste, food waste (including all containers and coffee cups from our canteen) and plastics/ cans.
they are all right next to each other and people can’t be arsed to put things in the right bin and I’m sick of fishing out other people’s laziness.NorthwindFull MemberRandom fact- the communal bins out in the public areas of my uni have a far better separation/success rate than the ones in the staff-only areas. The kids are alright…
seosamh77Free MemberWe’ve got 4 bins in work as well, general, paper, plastic, cans. The scottish government came out with some workplace legislation a year or 2 ago.
globaltiFree MemberI think a lot about plastic bottles because I see a lot on the verges and it annoys the hell out of me. If I was king of the world I’d force soft drinks and water makers to put a one pound deposit on each bottle, which would discourage fat idiots from chugging sugary drinks and create a market for empty bottles. The problem would be in making the payback system work; no retailer would want to have to collect the empties and hand out the cash and some clever crook would find a way of turning the system to their advantage. So I can’t see how it would work.
NorthwindFull MemberWe’ve got a 10p deposit thing at work- if you buy anything from the shop or machines it’s got a barcode on, there’s machines to deposit it to and you can either get the refund, or donate it to charity. They also take standard plastic bottles. Not sure how succesful it’s been- the machine is pretty massive and often out of action so it’s not ideal
muppetWranglerFree Memberand some clever crook would find a way of turning the system to their advantage.
[puts on criminal mastermind cloak and strokes cat]
At a quid a bottle I’d just buy empty bottles in bulk from the manufacturer, I doubt they’d cost much more than a couple of pence per bottle. 90% + profit.
[edit]
Northwind’s bar code scheme could put a spanner in the works.
andylFree MemberI had an idea of fine any company who’s packaging is found as litter or not recyclable.
I know it’s the people who drop the waste but the company has made a profit from selling that item which is now causing litter. Maybe we need to make packaging stay as owned by the company and anything none-recyclable can be returned to them via the place you bought it.
andytherocketeerFull MemberIn Germany 98.5% percent of bottles are recycled..
25¢ deposit on them
any that get dumped in public trash cans get picked out by tramps where they can the go claim the deposits.cynic-alFree MemberSince the placky bag 5p charge there’s talk of similar with coffee cups, you’d hope it would extend to bottles…and why not glass ones too?
milky1980Free MemberThey moved away from glass bottles due to weight and breakages IIRC. Something needs to be done though as it’s scary how many you see in the most ridiculous places.
One way to reduce them would be to make milk come in glass bottles like the milkman used, with them being returned and reused. Much better than the plastic crap the supermarkets sell it in.
Rich_sFull MemberWorked in a UK site of a large German company last week. End of day took my detritus to the bins and sorted accordingly, at the very top of the “general” bin were two plastic bottles. Distance to the plastic bin? Approx 40cm. I think some people just cannot be arsed.
About 15 years ago I took it upon myself to check how much paper was being wasted by a company I worked for (environmental management degree finally in use!). Each week they ordered 7 boxes of paper; I went through everyone’s bins after work, fished out the A4 and stacked it all in reception. 3 boxes of paper were thrown out each week. Not sure what this proves, but it was a satisfying exercise!
notmyrealnameFree MemberWe’ve had our recycling bin taken away at work. We’ve gone from having two good size bins, one recycling and one rubbish, to one single wheelie bin like you have at home.
Despite trying to get a new recycling bin sorted it’s like some kind of impossible mission, no one will give us a recycling bin!
It’s bloody annoying considering the amount of boxes and bottles that we throw out each week.I think the German idea of deposits on plastic bottles is a great idea. You never used to see glass pop bottles being thrown out when I was a kid and they had a 10p deposit on them!
bigblackshedFull Membercloudnine – Member
British households fail to recycle a ‘staggering’ 16m plastic bottles a day..
Yet another Depressingly stupid waste.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/15/british-households-fail-to-recycle-a-staggering-16m-plastic-bottles-a-dayI cant even imagine what that many bottles would look like.
I make my living making PET bottles for an energy and black current drink maker, I’ll leave which one to your guessing.
The state of the recycling industry is shocking in this country. About 25% of the bottles we make are from post consumer waste PET (RPET). The downside to this is there is a European shortage of suitable waste to manufacture the RPET, which in turn drives up the price. It’s about £400-500 more per tonne than virgin PET. It’s a vicious circle then with lack of recycled bottles, higher prices for material, thus customers choose virgin bottles that don’t get recycled.
I will say the company I work for has its manufacturing on our customers site. There are a couple of advantages, we combine our waste stream so anything that isn’t used is recycled on site and reused, we also only produce what the customer wants down to a few minutes. No lorries or warehouses full of empty bottles, or in fact no lorries transporting empty bottles.
I used to work for Heineken, bottling and canning. Both glass bottles and cans were transported from the manufacturer to site. Big trailers full of lots of air, the glass was still quite heavy. The full finished product only half filled the trailer. It was simply to heavy to fill the trailer.
I remember the deposits on glass pop bottles as a kid, you could make good money by collecting and returning the bottles. Unfortunately I don’t know if the supermarkets would sign up to deposit and return of any bottles, it’s just not in their interests. As for charging the manufacturer if consumers don’t recycle, why not the retailer? Neither manufacturers or retailers taking the hit is going to encourage the consumer to recycle. It will just enforce an attitude of “it’s not my responsibility”.
projectFree MemberI recycle all platic bottles, by saving them up nad when i go the local tesco deposit them in the bottle bank along with all paper, cans all get collecte by council, but to save the space in the bin,the supermarket gets mine, also plastic bags and film get crushed down into a plastic bag and is recycled in the plastic bag bin at the entrance, now two wheeled trollies, its that popular.
AdamTFull Member….and if one plastic bottle should accidentally fall, there’d be 15,999,999 plastic bottles standing on the wall?
( Could be a looong thread?)
CoyoteFree MemberThey’ve had a deposit system in Canada for years now. If the locals don’t recycle then others will comb bins etc. and return stuff for the deposit sometimes a shopping trolley at a time.
squirrelkingFree MemberSooner we have a plastic and glass deposit system like in Germany the better. From the look of the Coca Cola bottles the plastic is reused? Some of them looked fairly worn at any rate.
bigblackshedFull Membersquirrelking – Member
From the look of the Coca Cola bottles the plastic is reused? Some of them looked fairly worn at any rate.They positively do not reuse the bottle. But looking at the type of PET used in Coke bottles it looks to have some, if not all RPET* content.
*RPET is reprocessed post-consumer waste bottles. Old bottles, granulated, reprocessed, and then moulded into new bottles.
One of the leading reasons why reusable glass has fallen out of favour is the risk of failure in the marketplace. The risk to the consumer, coupled with an ever increasing litigation mindset. It also bloody heavy, full or empty.
jimmyFull MemberDeposit systems won’t work because it’s a cost to the business. I thought Germany’s (excellent) pfand system was gradually dying out – I used to love buying a crate of beer and taking it back with the bottles for a couple of Marks return. Makes total and utter sense – unless you’re paying to reprocess the bottles which manufacturers / retailers will fight against while plastic is so cheap. I think it’s embarrassing that we don’t do this on a national / global scale.
dyna-tiFull MemberI’ve been giving all my recyclables to the one company for decades, but once they have it it’s out of my hands what they choose the do with it 😕
The company being the council refuse collections.
Nipper99Free MemberHmm, surprised no one has thought of a cracking little business say delivering milk to peoples houses in glass bottles that are collected when empty and replaced with full ones, the empties being cleaned and reused -someone really ought to give it a go.
notsospeedydazFree MemberWhere I work everything gets sorted in the tea room plastic, paper, cans. Then it all gets put in the general waste skip !
mikewsmithFree MemberDeposit systems won’t work because it’s a cost to the business.
Funnily enough it’s the companies complaining so much here on Oz when they try and expand it. I think that is a general good sign that it’s a good idea.
On top of that there are some simple steps like work places banning the sale/handing out of bottled water, nothing wrong with reusable glass bottles, more public water points in cities etc.. I think last time it was discussed people struggled to get their heads around carrying a water bottle etc. it’s common place all over the world and makes a huge difference.
In the end though it’s time to possibly give up on the old/objectionale/lazy and just start making some rules that work, if thats deposits, smaller household bins, mandatory kerbside collections and more then go for it.
andytherocketeerFull MemberSooner we have a plastic and glass deposit system like in Germany the better. From the look of the Coca Cola bottles the plastic is reused? Some of them looked fairly worn at any rate.
They positively do not reuse the bottle. But looking at the type of PET used in Coke bottles it looks to have some, if not all RPET* content.
They have 2 types in Germany – the really thin type, same as UK, those definitely are not reused and get a 25¢ deposit. And the thicker heavy duty ones, which I always assumed were reusable, and they get the 15¢ deposit same as reusable bottles. Coca cola tend to be in the “reusable” bottles. Pepsi in the definitely non-reusable ones.
Deposit systems won’t work because it’s a cost to the business. I thought Germany’s (excellent) pfand system was gradually dying out.
The deposit system is law. That’s probably the only way they made it work, and I’d fully expect that’s the only way it would be made to work in UK too. But I would expect that retailers would rather not have to bother.
Then there’s prepackaging on fruit and veg. Never seen that outside of UK. Stick a deposit on that too.
ScottCheggFree MemberIt’s called DPG – Deutche Pfandsystem Gmb. It’s the little symbol with a bottle and an arrow.
We print bottle labels for Yewrope and have to do these in the millions. It’s built into the life of the bottle from the very outset and works brilliantly.
But it means our print waste has a value so has to be securely disposed of, despite hardly anyone in this country knowing what it is.
bikebouyFree Member16 Million Plastic Bottles!!!
But only 9millon bicycles in Beijing..
ant77Free MemberI see quite a bit online about using hemp plastic for bottles? Biodegrades pretty quickly.
What, other than the grey area on legality, would be the downsides to this?
Would it biodegrade too quickly and you’d end up with bottles of pop exploding on the shelves?
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