Recycling - how much faff is too much faff?

Ours takes hard plastic. We wash it. 

Tesco has a cage for soft plastics, they seem to take everything according to their advertising. We could probably get by on a landfill bin once a month .

Glass in the bin at the gym, plastic wrapping to landfill. An otherwise unnecessary trip to Newcastle is probably worse than a bit of plastic in landfill.

Wiltshire are pretty good.  They seem to take everything except soft plastic and clothing.  As a family of 4 and composting food waste, a single, thin landfill bin would last us around 2 months, but is collected 1/4 (at most) full every 2 weeks.  

As I'm stood at the sink washing out plastic and glass and pulling tape off cardboard boxes in the vain hope that the council won't either burn it, bury it or ditch it on a developing country, I often think that it is the very definition of pissing into the wind. But while I know that the world is ****ed,  stopping trying would be full admission and be too depressing, so I keep doing it, for now at least.

i used to do everything. glass plastic paper and food,all seperated and sorted.

a mate works for leeds council on the bin wagon. turns out all leeds waste is incinerated together now.

i no longer bother.  i feel recycling is kind of like owning a electric car.  it still needs charging, which needs electric..... which isnt good for the planet.

and then i get down, because i realise that if everyone in the country did the right thing it still wouldnt matter.

the damage caused by china, russia, india and the US means the world is ****ed regardless.

plastic wrapping to landfill

soft plastic

Several supermarkets recycle wrapping and soft plastics. Aldi, some Lidl, Co-op and Tesco that I know of

Aldi is a pain with a letterbox slot in a large bin, others have a bigger opening so you can get a week's worth in in one go

I don't know what the rejection/incineration rate is locally, but if I did it'd probably increase my binning rate; recycling is a chore

We get everything recycled/reused/repurposed over here, soft plastic, hard plastic, glass (coloured/clear), metal cans, plastic bottles, cardboard, misc metals, electronics, ceramics, bulbs, green waste, garden waste, building waste, batteries, oils and so on. Also have ability to take working stuff that you don't want to the recycling centre and they clean up, sort out and resell, or breakdown/scrap/recycle where possible. Also furniture, clothes, white goods and so on.

The recycling centre takes some, kerbside collection takes some and most towns/villages/districts/shopping centres have a mini recycling centre. There are probably 5 of the mini ones within 10km of me, and it's 6-7km to the nearest village

Means that a months worth of wheelie bin is (basically) two supermarket sized carrier bags of "stuff". And couple of times a year i'll chuck a bin bag full of other stuff that i'll have collected. Got the food waste nailed now as well, basically down to one small bag a week. And it's only really going out because it's growing mold.

Usually 5 of us in the house. Worst case it's 7...

Massive change to how i used to like in the UK (i left before recycling got big where i was) used to chuck two massive bin bags a week. Minimum.

never aerosols (apart from bike cleaning stuff, obvs)

Just wondering what bike cleaning stuff needs an aerosol? Most of the aerosols i've used over the years (decades!) end up going everywhere and don't really get in where they need to (or get in everywhere they aren't needed, surefire way to degrease the deepest internals of your freehub or bottom bracket...)

Bear in mind that collection and recycling may be very different things. Greenpeace stuff I spotted the other day basically says plastic recycling is bollocks, and it's just a sop to make people feel better.

Huge amounts of what you put in a recycle bin just gets burned or shipped off to the third world and burned or tipped.

Warwickshire now take soft plastics and nothing needs to be sorted - just all goes in the blue topped wheelie bin. It would probably take us nearly a year to fill our landfill bin. Food waste is collected separately but most of ours goes in our compost bins anyway.

Do what you can. 

in manchester we have grey bin for general refuse. Green bin for garden and compostible waste. And brown for cans and glass and plastic (polycarbonate) bottles. 

The local recycling centres take a whole lot more including batteries, electrical appliances, mattresses, fluorescent bulbs (remember those?), paint, oil, …

In Japan it seems like they have more focus https://thatjapanlife.com/about-garbage-sorting-and-recycling-in-japan/

Wiltshire won’t take the plastic boxes that wild bird feed comes in, I guess because it’s bulky. I bulk buy suet pellets and calci worms, and decant into the empty containers, plus I use extra ones for other garden items. Those that crack or are surplus, I put into a large plastic bag and stomp on it to break up the box then put it into the blue recycling bin. Glass goes into a smaller black bin, household waste goes into a separate green bin. I must admit to putting the soft plastic films into the household waste, I forget that I can put it into a large plastic bag and take to the supermarket. Wiltshire will now take batteries and small electrical items, if they’re in a separate bag on top of the blue bin. I’ve also got two garden waste bins as well, for hedge clippings and other compostable vegetable waste. As there’s just me in the house, I can skip one or two collections, I have the collection calendar on my fridge and highlight the next date I’m likely to need. 
Not a lot of faffing, really.

We're pretty lucky in that the recycling bin takes all sorts (except soft plastics) unwashed and gets sorted by the depot.

We probably put it out once a month. The normal bin is probably more like every two months.

Hospital soft plastics here get taken to a place in Brisbane where they incinerate with filters and generate electricity so at least it's used. 

Crikey, I forgot the manchester blue bin for card and paper. 

@thegeneralist has it. Sorting your rubbish for the council to collect isn’t ‘recycling’. What they do with it at t’other end may be.

Posted by: prettygreenparrot

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in manchester we have grey bin for general refuse. Green bin for garden and compostible waste. And brown for cans and glass and plastic (polycarbonate) bottles. 

In Bury, greater Manchester we have 

Grey: general refuse

Blue: glass and plastic

Green: paper and card

Brown: garden waste and compostable stuff. 

I do a pretty good job at sorting my stuff. Rarely rinse cans. 

There has recently been a new recycling contract with the councils in and around Bury which now allows plastic that was recyclable for many years but the contract  didn't allow it. 

Yep,

Another Northumberland resident here.

Somewhat pees me off, that Newcastle & North Tyneside councils have recycled glass for aeons now.

I recycle glass at the local recyling place its only half a mile away from me, so it would be bad form not to.

I have a a collection of builders flexi buckets which i fill up with batteries, electrical stuff and other recyclable items then do a trip every so often.

I put most clean plastic packaging in the recycling, I dont see why the councils cant get their act together if the supermarkets can.

No doubt i'll be 'flamed' by some virtue signalling eco warrior on here with my approach to plastic recyling

I'd check and see how much of it is recycled anyway. If there is a multifuel/waste burning power station nearby then it all goes there instead. This is what happens in the Leeds area as it all ends up at Ferrybridge 1 and 2 power plants.

i used to do everything. glass plastic paper and food,all seperated and sorted.

a mate works for leeds council on the bin wagon. turns out all leeds waste is incinerated together now.

i no longer bother.  i feel recycling is kind of like owning a electric car.  it still needs charging, which needs electric..... which isnt good for the planet.

and then i get down, because i realise that if everyone in the country did the right thing it still wouldnt matter.

the damage caused by china, russia, india and the US means the world is ****ed regardless.

@ton - none of that is really true. 

1. - It might look like that to the bin lorry guys, but Voelia do pre sorting, cleaning and treatment prior to incineration - that's what they're contracted for and I'm sure there would be some blowback were it not being done.  

2. Yes, an EV needs charging, but the UKs electricity mix is now over 75% renewable annually and is climbing.  An average EV being close to 90% efficiency and over 85% even including transmission loss.  Compare that to an ICE car which, when taking into account Oil extraction, refining, transportation and then finally thermal and mechanical looses in the engine is close to 20% efficient.  An EV makes a BIG environmental saving.  Even if you look at embedded energy, in under 20k miles on the UKs current electricity mix, an EV has beaten the ICE.  over 100k miles an EV will save over 90% of the total emissions vs an ICE car.  

3.  Everything makes a difference and whilst many in the world arent doing much, it is still moving.  There're now vast swathes of the US which function totally off-grid, China has had the greatest impact in terms of renewable output of any country in the world.  IF the UK manages to transition to an almost green economy, even just locally, think what would change...less energy volatility, less cost, cheaper business rates, better air standards, less demand on the NHS, less pollutants entering the water table...and many more.  It's not all about our contribution to global emissions.  

If everyone tried and was willing, even just a little to put themselves to a little inconvenience, it's a net cumulative postitive effect, but also, I think it helps....what to call it, societal good will...  There're always some who will just, for whatever reason be selfish and self entitled, but we can just ignore those idiots and make a collective difference.

We have a new food waste bin at work. Made in china, shipped from china along with the roll of yellow food waste plastic bags.

The bag will be changed weekly and it's probably only ever going to be 10% full.

This will then be transferred to a central depot for sorting via an hgv .

Now you can argue that the boat is coming anyway and the lorry is going back to the depot empty. The bin liners might be recycled plastic already , and my apple core can degrade to produce a combustible gas potentially. 

It's all burned at SUEZ SERC Avonmouth.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=py06hsv3SUs

They love plastic, burns well.

Energy recovery is another little wheeze of distraction.

We sell the service of burning rubbish, that's it.

Gangsters, no better than flytippers.

And it's all from London.

Whilst it is true some segregated plastic is not recycled, the segregation makes it possible and economical to do so as MRFs (material recovery facility - a big conveyor with lasers to spot the different polymer types) are developed, so it is still a Good Thing. The likelihood of material being recycled is determined by 1. Value and 2. Ease of separation. So metals are both valuable and easy to separate with magnets and recovery rates are really high. Glass and plastics have lower value and less simple options for automated segregation, but their value is maximised if they are really well segregated and clean. Hence getting us to do it early in the process. 

Posted by: smiffy

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their value is maximised if they are really well segregated and clean. Hence getting us to do it early in the process

I'm a fan of recycling, it has been engrained in me since an early age. But when I see the state of most public "recycling" bins I really have to question the value. The waste stream is so contaminated with unwashed, half-eaten food containers and pretty much every other waste type chucked in by the lazy ignorant hordes.

I can't remember the name of one of the original climate scientists, but his famous line from decades back "Recycling isn't going to save the planet". If that's what you want, stop eating meat, don't fly or drive and more importantly tell all your friends to do the same. (Spolier: its probably too late anyway).

@Daffy

Mate seriously it is all just a big fat elastoplast what we do in the UK.

Our damage and waste is minute compared to the big 4.  And they will never stop what they are doing...... their economies would go into meltdown. 

In terms of % contribution, maybe but in terms of showing what a developed economy can achieve without economic meltdown.  The UK has lowered its C02/capita by over 60% in 4 years.  France has lowered its by 43%.  Even the US has lowered its emissions by 34%.  Are our economies in collapse?  China's emissions are up, but if you take out manufacturing, China is lower than us.  Its total emissions are sustaining renewable transition around the world.  

Posted by: ton

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i no longer bother.  i feel recycling is kind of like owning a electric car.  it still needs charging, which needs electric..... which isnt good for the planet.

Surely as a cyclist, having the pollution being at concentrated points rather than on the high street and local roads is enough of a personal benefit to be pro-electric car?  The day I'm walking or riding to work (or for leisure) and only half the cars are spewing out fumes will be much nicer.

The food packaging annoys me, although there are some supermarket's doing their 'bit'. We re-cycle everything else, glass bottles, plastic bottles etc go in the recycling, but the packaging of food is currently general waste locally (South Manchester). 

We've now had to pay extra for garden waste - the council still collects the food waste in your large green bins, but no clippings etc if you haven't paid the fee (you put a sticker on the bin).  We mulch what we can, but a few long hedges soon fill the bin on a regular basis.

I find it quite satisfying to recycle any food packaging plastics via the collection points at the supermarket. Council collects glass, paper, card, plastic bottles, tins etc, food waste (orange peel, banana skins etc) goes in the compost bin.  Have to pay for green waste collection (even though its mostly leaves from the trees on nearby council land).

@verses

Mate I am actually  Anti car if anything.

A million cars is a million cars however they are powered. 

I,cycle commuted for 37 years. Never took a job I was unable to cycle to.

For me the biggest and best thing we could do in the UK would be to make all City centers car free zones.  Imagine that.... like other forward thinking countries have.

I can understand the feeling that our (UK) contribution to total global CO2 emissions is small, therefore whatever improvement we make will only be a small part of the solution, but your points in the OP mix up loads of different issues and lump them all into "environment"

Firstly, just on CO2, the UK has done a pretty good job. 20 years ago, we were pumping out twice our fair share of CO2 per capita, based on the global average, now we are just below the average having cut emissions by half. 

Yes, India doubled their emissions in the same period, but they are still less than half per capita what we produce. Fortunately, as less developed countries industrialise, they will have access to renewable and lower carbon technologies and hopefully they can mature and get sufficient energy for their needs though less polluting means.

Anyway, my point was that recycling is about far more than just CO2. It is about energy, protection of resources, reducing localised pollution and disposal efficiency. 

Waste separation/segregation allows councils to send different wastes for different processes.

For example, if food waste goes to landfill, it contributes to the production of methane, hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide as it rots. If it is collected it can be composted or sent for anaerobic digestion and energy recovery.

Recycling aluminium is really easy and saves mining and refining ore. Lithium ion batteries can be recycled and metals like cobalt and manganese can be recovered, while other components are incinerated and their energy recovered.

Plastic is more tricky because it covers loads of different compounds that need to be treated in different ways and for some of them, recycling is actually reuse - like shredding plastic bottles and making fleeces (now less favoured as washing fleeces seems to be a source of microplastics in the environment). 

But there seems to have been good progress in chemical recycling of plastics. The process looks a bit like refining crude oil. The plastics are heated and the polymers are "cracked" into smaller compounds that can then be separated by distillation and then fed back into the production process with some virgin material to make more plastic.

These processes are reliant on somebody - ie either us or council appointed waste contractors, separating and cleaning the plastics in the waste stream, which equals either faff or cost.

If there isn't capacity to handle it here, some is exported and there have been some horror stories of waste going to india, china vietnam etc, but there is definitely more control over that now. The other option is just to incinerate it. 

Incineration is not popular in the UK, but I'd rather it was burnt (with scrubbers and filters etc) and the energy recovered, than left in the ground to rot and leach into ground water or something. 

Ultimately, using less (hydrocarbon derived) plastic is probably the best option, but there are often unforeseen negative consequences that are difficult to quantify at first. Things like shipping, storing and distributing some food with less plastic leading to higher wastage rates and therefore greater total emissions. 

Where does your recycling go? | My Recycling Wales

This is a fairly useful resource for anyone in Wales. I haven't looked but other regions may have something similar.

It's not 100% transparent what happens to some waste goes once it's at an 'end' point but it's interesting none the less and helps dispel some myths about what happens.

I'm in 2 minds about the whole thing. Recycling is a often a tricky concept anyway, in many cases it's pretty energy intensive and so you have to pick between "green" (good for the environment 'cos less emissions and energy/water use" and "green" (good for the environment 'cos less plastic/glass/whatever floating around in the sea & hedges). See also: plastic vs paper shopping bags.

Do I drop this piece of plastic in the recycling bin? Will it get simply melted down and reshaped? Or cracked and distilled for use in new plastic? Or converted into a different type (eg bottle -> clothing)? Will that introduce more or less microplastics into the environment? Maybe it depends on the type of plastic? Will it be done locally or shipped halfway across the world? Will it actually be recycled or end up on a beach somewhere? Maybe I should just drop it in the black bin, which goes for incineration & energy recovery, and is therefore potentially greener than recycling it? Everything that goes in the black bin gets sorted for recycling anyway before incineration, how much can I rely on that? Can I actually believe anything the council/SUEZ say anyway? How much actually happens, how much is "wishful thinking, in an ideal situation", and how much is outright fibs?

I'll never get a reliable answer to any of the above. Either because "it depends", or it's too complicated, or everyone has their own agenda, or it's misleading and the quantities are fiddled, or or or...

Based on all that, I try to recycle everything possible but chuck it in the black bin if there's any doubt. Better it goes in there than contaminate the recycling (which based on the neighbours' bins, is pretty bloody contaminated anyway, so I don't know if this makes any difference!). l live in Manchester where they take all the common stuff kerbside. Soft plastics go to Tesco. Batteries go in a pot and taken whenever it's full enough (many large shops have a battery box).

yes - contamination is a huge issue. I get so annoyed with my inlaws when they chuck allsorts straight into recycling - like meat trays with the absorbent pad, the film and some chicken skin all in the box.

I also know someone who puts yoghurt pots in the dishwasher before putting them in the recycling..

What I'd like to see from the government is a mandate on what plastic can be used.  Maximum 12 types of plastics covering everything from soft to hard for anything which carries food or is intended as a packaging material.  All coloured, marked, specified (as in - crisps MUST be sold in this) or enforced in a very specific way.  Each type must be proven to not chemically damage the things it's supposed to carry and MUST be recyclable by some means.  This would make it super easy for all councils and governments to enable recycling, for manufacturers to not only setup for this type of packaging, but to also be involved in its lifecycle and to keep these waste/new products in the lifecycle in the UK.  We need joined up thinking, not the free for all that we have now.   

Posted by: jimmy

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The waste stream is so contaminated with unwashed, half-eaten food containers and pretty much every other waste type chucked in by the lazy ignorant hordes.

I was a "green champion" at work (every branch had one).  The amount of contamination in the recycling bin in the kitchen was unreal and it was as simple a system as you could get, Dry Mixed Recycling or "DMR" meant just one bin for all types of recycling and one for general waste.  I resolved the issue almost entirely by swapping the bins around so that the general waste bin was the one closest to the prep area instead.  Lazy hordes indeed.

Posted by: ton

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Mate seriously it is all just a big fat elastoplast what we do in the UK.

Our damage and waste is minute compared to the big 4.  And they will never stop what they are doing...... their economies would go into meltdown. 

Even if we assume this to be true, do we conclude that the best course of action is to do nothing?  You've popped out for a smoke, might as well flick the fag end on the floor as there's a dozen there already, what difference does one more make?

It might well be little more than enabling virtue signalling, but it makes no odds to me to put an empty pop bottle into a green bin instead of a black one.  It's hardly a massive hardship so why not?

As for the OP,

I wouldn't be making a special trip.  I'd be following the council's guidelines and recycling what they said I can recycle.  If their policy was (excuse me) rubbish, I'd be emailing them to press for improvements.  If however eg the local supermarket had a glass recycling skip and I was going there anyway, it's no skin off my nose to take a bag of bottles and jars.

Posted by: Daffy

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What I'd like to see from the government is a mandate on what plastic can be used.  Maximum 12 types of plastics covering everything from soft to hard for anything which carries food or is intended as a packaging material.  All coloured, marked, specified (as in - crisps MUST be sold in this) or enforced in a very specific way.  Each type must be proven to not chemically damage the things it's supposed to carry and MUST be recyclable by some means.  This would make it super easy for all councils and governments to enable recycling, for manufacturers to not only setup for this type of packaging, but to also be involved in its lifecycle and to keep these waste/new products in the lifecycle in the UK.  We need joined up thinking, not the free for all that we have now.   

You see ideas like that initially sound sensible, but every time I've seen regulations imposed by governments on how things must be done it has (1) pushed costs up, or at least reduced competition that could bring them down; (2) created a new artificial industry of compliance experts who know jack all but make money at everyone else (and ultimately the consumers') expense; (3) innovation is inhibited - e.g. imagine if there was a clever food packaging from a new, genuinely environmentally better, material - can you imagine the barrier to entry to get it adopted when the law needs changed, every LA needs to understand it, competitors with the 12 approved types will have a vested interest to block new entrants, cost will become the only criteria for adoption as each of the 12 come with the right box ticked so best no longer matters.  It also needs at the very least 4 nations cooperation, but really international agreement to make it work (so then someone is complaining that the EU is telling us what container Irn Bru can be sold in).  Then on top of that there's usual arguments about microbusinesses being hurt so exemptions get made for businesses with <x turnover or employees, or some particular type of foods and suddenly all sort of people are inventing ways to fall into the exemption.

You see ideas like that initially sound sensible, but every time I've seen regulations imposed by governments on how things must be done it has (1) pushed costs up, or at least reduced competition that could bring them down; (2) created a new artificial industry of compliance experts who know jack all but make money at everyone else (and ultimately the consumers') expense; (3) innovation is inhibited - e.g. imagine if there was a clever food packaging from a new, genuinely environmentally better, material - can you imagine the barrier to entry to get it adopted when the law needs changed, every LA needs to understand it, competitors with the 12 approved types will have a vested interest to block new entrants, cost will become the only criteria for adoption as each of the 12 come with the right box ticked so best no longer matters.  It also needs at the very least 4 nations cooperation, but really international agreement to make it work (so then someone is complaining that the EU is telling us what container Irn Bru can be sold in).  Then on top of that there's usual arguments about microbusinesses being hurt so exemptions get made for businesses with <x turnover or employees, or some particular type of foods and suddenly all sort of people are inventing ways to fall into the exemption.

Of course it will initially push up costs.  All of the cheap, unsustainable packaging will disappear and you'll be left using packaging that is more expensive, but at least you have control over it and costs will eventually fall. 2, is unavoidable, but can be managed.  3.  True.  Something would have to be enabled to allow for government approved and funded tests to allow newer entrants to the market.  Genuine innovation can then be releases in pre-determined updates in the same way we have version control for software releases with full disclosure of features and changes.   Why would the law need to be amended?  You simply replace plastic1 with plastic13 with updated standards and a timeframe for introduction, transition to P13 and a termination of P1. The remainder of the law remains.

The EU common charging standard is a big win in my book.  

Given the population size of Southampton, it always shocks me how some theoretically recyclable material is expected to be put in the general waste wheelie bin, such as aluminium trays and foil. Due to not having suitable recycling factories for these materials locally.

And how there used to only be something like only two factories in the uk that could deal with the throwaway coffee cups from the likes of Starbucks, so again, they all went in general waste.

Posted by: n0b0dy0ftheg0at

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And how there used to only be something like only two factories in the uk that could deal with the throwaway coffee cups from the likes of Starbucks, so again, they all went in general waste.

wastes with more than one component are a pain. Coffee cups with plastic coatings were one example. Pill packets with plastic and foil another.

Pringles tubes were one of the must un-recyclable items in the UK until very recently. I think they had to be sent to a single, specific recycling centre but they've started to make a new design that can go into the normal cardboard collection.

i no longer bother.  i feel recycling is kind of like owning a electric car.  it still needs charging, which needs electric..... which isnt good for the planet.

You could produce the electricity entirely from coal and it would still emit less CO2 than burning petrol or diesel. EVs and recycling aren't good for the planet, just much less bad.

Reduce

Reuse

Recycle.

Recycling is a poor option.