[Closed] Recycling stuff, who does?

Not as much as we should.

Defo worth the effort. I'm the same - forever pulling stuff back out of the bin that Mrs. Rickos has chucked out. I wouldn't mind but she's so random with her recycling efforts.

I recycle most stuff, its easy and saves natural resourses as well as not dumping stuff in a hole in the ground, dont forget to take your plastic bags back to the supermarket along with all the plastic film for recycling.

Yep me too, missus and kids aren't too bad but I do find myself bin diving to retrieve stuff. On a basic level if we didn't recycle our main bin would over flow before the fortnightly collection (the system works).

We recycle as much as we car and generally only stick out 1 bag of rubbish in the big black bin.

Does get annoying as we have to take it to the recycling centre as they dont do pick ups out in the country 🙁

But its worth the hassle !

I do. Take most of it to the Tesco recycling bins when I'm going there anyway. My bin only needs to be emptied every 3 or 4 weeks.

We do everything we can, my missus is more fastidious than me. What annoys me is that tinfoil isn't part of our councils recycling collection. We take that to a separate skip at Morrisons.

If your efforts recyling are followed up by the council when they collect then recycling is worth it, but I have seen snippets on the box that suggest some councils dont have facilities to process all they collect. I go through the motions and recycle, as Im not a lover of 'sky fill ' sites. just hope my efforts are worth it.

If anyone can lend me 650k I'll start recycling MDF...

www.mdfrecovery.co.uk

What really annoys me about recycling mdf etc, is that recent developments in "carbon neutral" efforts, mean that in place of coal or oil, many power stations are being converted to, or built to burn wood pellets. In many cases this is raw timber which, instead of being used to make mdf, or chipboard first, made into furniture and then recycled, or, used as fuel. Is simply felled, converted to fuel pellets , then burnt. Chipboard manufactureres are now paying far more for raw material, in many cases because they are having to source timber from further afield and paying more to haul it ( usually by road) further than they used to.

We do, it's very easy to where I'm living.
It's interesting you mention your son. I basically view the reality of household recycling as an empty ritual - there's little if anything in it, counterproductive at times, and it's by far the least important of the 3Rs. At the deeper level, though, I think it's quite useful in influencing how we think and live, particularly for the next generation.

I've just cooked dinner - all the food waste went into the wee green bin, the stella waste went into the stella can box - probably a complete waste of time in terms of the pounds, shilling and pence of global consumption. But my son, whose only 3 1/2 and helped me cook, to see all that is quite important I feel - growing up thinking about consumption has broader implications.

I bet most people recycle stuff.......ebay

I do as much as I can at home and, but despair with the idiots at work who seem to get very confused with 2 bins in the office - all recycled items in one bin and general waste in the other.

And don't get me started on leaving monitors on standby.

So much for being one of the Sunday Times Best Green Companies.........

Been at it for 20+ years, really easy these days.

Totally gets my goat that folk CBA. Pure laziness and nothing more IMO.

My wife doesnt deflate bottkes before binning them! She's burying air for hundreds of years! Grrrrr!

Mr Cake

Not sure why you're upset at people recycling MDF...no one does it at the moment!! Burnt or landfilled. We would be the first to do it commercially.

Also not sure why you are content that wood (of any flavour) is burnt for fuel after having been made into products. It can be recycled many times before that need happen.

Finally, guess what MDF / chipboard manufacturers do with their internal waste - yep, burn it!

I do agree that energy from biomass plants are not using the feedstocks that they were designed / intended for but poorly thought out subsidies offer up so much of an advantage in the market that its just too easy at the moment.

For clarity, we intend to reclaim the fibres from waste MDF and use them in other applications. Burning for fuel is not our driver.

Yes, you absolutely should recycle - especially electrical equipment. A hairdryer will contain plastic, copper, steel and rubber. It is much cheaper to recycle these than to dig up more raw materials so if we don't recycle then new items will get more expensive. These items also take hundreds of years to decompose and in some cases will leach poisons in to the ground effecting water supplies. Hence the WEEE regulations.

[url] http://sweeep.co.uk/site/page/home [/url]

Ruddy awkward for us. Nearest bin 100m away -for household rubbish, paper recyling is in a different location 1 km a mile away as is glass, packaging a differnt location 250 m away. So its difficult to do on foot or by bike

I'm with cakes argument

Good timber is going straight to woodfuel (which by the way needs over 600bhp of machine to chip). This increases demand and road mileage of all timber products. Timber could initially be used in products that would help reduce the need for non-renewable resources and then it could be burnt.
Chip for industrial/domestic heating is even more of a green wash, lot of oil required in its production, storage and delivery.

I shouldn't complain really, I work in the forest industry and it's pushing timber prices up as the demand is just getting higher. Just a shame to see good sawlogs going for chip. Most hauliers have contracts to get a minimum amount through the power station gates though.

, so I went & retrieved it all, squashed the box down to recycle & put the old dryer in the 'household waste disposal site' pile. So....
Am I sad & Is It worth the effort?

Possibly not. It may just have ended up in the 3rd world.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Recycling-Gone-Bad-Where-Does-Our-High-Tech-Waste-Go-38885.shtml

I dont understand why council tenants aren't made to recycle.. many of them do eff all and its not hard to separate waste into bags. Recycle or loose your state sponsored house... nothing like a bit of motivation 😈

Timber

I understand the arguments and agree that virgin timber (good quality) shouldn't be used for pellets. However, with current subsidies in place who can blame forest owners from cashing in?

Ironically, we are benefitting as a result due to the price rises - our technology now becomes a 'no brainer' - at least it seems to be for the more forward thinking panel producers. Some however, continue to burn their waste for fuel when they could recycle. I was just highlighting the apparent contradiction in panel manufacturers campaigning against virgin timber being burnt when they refuse to walk the walk with their own operations.

More generally, my main concern is that people seem 'content' that one user life has been gained from the timber, when IMO we should embed the carbon over and over where technically possible (MDF fibres can be re-used in new MDF production, thermal insulation and the like). Reassuringly we are now being approached by many 'blue chips' and retail chains that are fed up with being offered up incineration with energy recovery by their waste contractors as the most sustainable disposal route.

There is of course a valid argument for the burning of the very lowest grades of waste wood.

IRC - that article is from 2006 and from the USA. So it pre-dates our WEEE regulations which makes it much harder to just off load it to China. It does still happen, but I can guarantee that any WEEE taken to household waste sites in London and the home counties is recycled in Britain and is in most cases re-used in the UK.

We recycle around 1000 tonnes of WEEE a week - most of that is metal which all stays in Britain.

but back to recycling, yes and it is easier now the council collect recycling from the sticks. They have given us half an oil barrels worth of plastic to do so in the process though.

Where it really goes, I'm dubious.

We do and I can't understand why the "non-recycle" bins still needs to be picked up weekly. We could easily for 2-3 weeks between pick-ups. Fewer pick-ups would encourage recycling!

[url= http://www.dgstandard.co.uk/dumfries-news/2012/01/27/2-million-zero-waste-park-plans-unveiled-51311-30206635/ ]Recycling plans for Dumfries and Galloway sited on what was a landfill site[/url]

Ah Ha! So TJ needs a vehicle really!!
Whatever, I just feel a bit better when I recycle. I don't recycle eveything you know (very very difficult) but I do bottles, paper & cardboard, ally (beer cans & bike bits). Plastic packaging is the biggest bain.

Druidh

Fewer pick ups would only encourage recycling in areas in which residents have some respect and pride in their surroundings. Your average 'Ned' street would just see huge piles of rotting trash and empty recycling bins. We have a fortnightly black bin collection which alternates with a green waste collection and 'mixed' recyclables. We are in a 'nice' street and it still amazes me that maybe 10% of the properties have over flowing black bins when ours is half empty.

The good news is that advances are being made in reclaiming much of what goes into black bag waste. Mainly for fuels admittedly but its better than landfill.

We do, well, I do anyway! I'm constantly fishing tins, plastic and cardboard out of my "everything else" bin because the wife & kids can't be arsed seperating stuff. I have to admit though, I don't do it fully through guilt, I do it so that I don't have to jump up and down on my "everything else" bin to get more rubbish in! If the lid peeps up just a wee bit the binmen won't empty it.
It amazes me just how much of our rubbish is actually recyclable though, and its not bloody difficult! 🙄

Carmarthenshire seem to have it sorted. They have provided me with a composter for my food/ green waste. I dig it into the garden. They collect cooked food/ meat waste (fats and oils) weekly to be composted with any green waste I or others put out for collection. Paper, card, plastics and metals are collected fortnightly. Likewise 'waste'- eg contaminated plastics, fabrics, nappies... I must admit to being at a loss about other things. Old bike tyres do get taken.

I re-cycle weee at home and at work. Glass goes into the glass bin too, Carmarthenshire County Council deals with the lot. It all gets taken to the big re-cycling centre in the sky; well it's actually beside the A 48, between Cross Hands and Carmarthen and it can get pretty smelly at times. It is en-route to Brechfa, you may well have smelt my waste, sorry :O

cb ! Sorry, just read the opening line of my post. Not suggesting recycling mdf is in anyway bad. It is the burning of virgin timber which is appalling me. Not the other way round ! With you all the way.

[i]We do and I can't understand why the "non-recycle" bins still needs to be picked up weekly. We could easily for 2-3 weeks between pick-ups. Fewer pick-ups would encourage recycling! [/i]

this. we tend not to put our 'rubbish' bin out every other fortnight. Family of 5 and we rarely fill it in a month. And others are complaining that the collection needs to go back to being weekly...

recycling is often the wrong answer anyway.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

Edit - the real answer is to reduce the amount of waste

Take green glass for example - no one uses green glass as glass in the uk - so it either goes to Germany to be made into new bottles or is crushed to "sand" for use as a building material.

Or the one that really annoys me. Scottish small scale breweries nearly all use the same or very similar glass bottles. Not reuseable. it would be far more energy efficient to reuse them rather than recycle but clearly for a small concern not economically viable to set up the plant required - why can they not all co operate to get the economies of scale?

We have a dishwasher and most of the (hand) washing up is stuff for recycling.

I try to recycle as much as I can however get frustrated by the lack of what our council will recycle! There are plenty of recyclable marked plastics that I put in the recycling bin that the council say they don't recycle. I still put them in the the vain hope that some one reads the logos, or that they will pull their fingers out of their arses and do the job properly (instead of wasting money on the stupid legible city signs which have been going in recently!).

why can they not all co operate to get the economies of scale?

My guess is they feel the market needs to differentiate between brands visually.

"Or the one that really annoys me. Scottish small scale breweries nearly all use the same or very similar glass bottles. Not reuseable. it would be far more energy efficient to reuse them rather than recycle but clearly for a small concern not economically viable to set up the plant required - why can they not all co operate to get the economies of scale"

TJ. Thats a good idea, why don't you help them instead of moaning about it! There is business in there for someone or at least a project for an interested party to do something. Lecture content, sorry.

We recycle, reuse whatever we can and have 4 compost bins on the go at present. It's really difficult for us to fill a bin especially when you don't shop at supermarkets.

Apart from putting the correct stuff (usually) in the blue/green bin, I don't recycle at all.

easy here. Paper, organics and normal stuff is separated in to their own bins and collected every 2nd week.

bottle and metal bins are a short drive away.

All drinks bottles have depo on them so are returned to the store

cynic-al - Member

why can they not all co operate to get the economies of scale?

My guess is they feel the market needs to differentiate between brands visually.

They use the same bottles or very similar

Yep, recycle here, as does the missus.

To those having difficulty persuading other family members to do it: try replacing the main bin in your kitchen with one that has two buckets (waste and recycling). Forces folk to think about it every time the put something in the bin. We stuck the council guideline for what can be recycled inside the lid of the bin, so there are no excuses 😀

TJ: yep, back in the day, when I lived in Milngavie, the local soft drink producer "Garvies" offered a 10p refund on all glass bottles that you took back to any shop that sold them. All got crated up and sent back to the factory to be washed and used again. That is proper re-use.

We seemed to do a lot better in the past: milk in reusable bottles instead of plastic cartons, cardboard boxes available for free at the supermarket, brown paper bags instead of plastic...

here are plenty of recyclable marked plastics that I put in the recycling bin that the council say they don't recycle. I still put them in the the vain hope that some one reads the logos

I understand the frustration but don't do that!

You are lowering the quality of the recycling streams they produce thus making them worth less. Subsequently they need more staff to sort the incoming materials, making it cost more.

Hence you'll get a council complaining that recycling is not economically viable and you'll make them [u]less[/u] likely to offer further recycling.

"TJ: yep, back in the day, when I lived in Milngavie, the local soft drink producer "Garvies" offered a 10p refund on all glass bottles that you took back to any shop that sold them. All got crated up and sent back to the factory to be washed and used again. That is proper re-use"

yep we had bon accord drinks who delivered and collected the bottles in crates.

we are going backwards in the name of cost thats for sure !

I understand the frustration but don't do that!

You are lowering the quality of the recycling streams they produce thus making them worth less. Subsequently they need more staff to sort the incoming materials, making it cost more.

Hence you'll get a council complaining that recycling is not economically viable and you'll make them less likely to offer further recycling.

I understand the reason behind your point there. However if the have a large volume of stuff which they don't want which they have sorted out of the stream could this not trigger them to think 'hey we get enough of this stuff to make recycling it viable'.

Wonder if there is a business opportunity here for someone to design an automatic sorting machine. If you loaded it with common brand pot shapes and their materials it could presort plastics.

could this not trigger them to think 'hey we get enough of this stuff to make recycling it viable'.

Nope. The minimum wage blokes hand sifting recyclables in the centre are unlikely to have any input on the overall council recycling strategy or contracts with upstream users of the streams.

This boring but sensible video from my local council covers some good stuff:

I tend to recycle most things, but I do fail at it when it gets inconvenient to do so.

My girlfriend, on the other hand, goes out of her way to recycle everything. I'm still not convinced that carrying plastic bottles all around France and then back to the UK to be recycled was the most effective...

You are lowering the quality of the recycling streams they produce thus making them worth less. Subsequently they need more staff to sort the incoming materials, making it cost more.

Hence you'll get a council complaining that recycling is not economically viable and you'll make them less likely to offer further recycling.

More staff equals less unemploymnet, you just needto find alternative places to sell the recycled stuff.

The tax on landfill is increasing every year, and the space to use for landfill is deminishing, so recycling is the way forward for the environmmnet.

The only regular things we don't recycling is plastic wrapping / film. Bristol is pretty good for collections and the plastic bottles and packaging just gets done taken to the supermarket recycling point when we go shopping.
Our wheely bin is rarely more than 1/4 full when it is collected every 2 weeks. Some peoples wheely bins are always overflowing with recyclable stuff, I just don't get why they can't do it.

Of course avoiding packaging in the first place is even better than recycling.