Plastic rant

Took two binliners of mixed plastic to the recycling place having taken out stuff like plastic drink and milk bottles etc. Put them in the plastic recycling container which was overflowing, only to see the guy on site take them out and throw them in the general waste container.

On quizzing the guy he says that only plastic containers marked with a 1 or 2 recycling badge are recycled – everything else just gets shipped into general waste.

WTF is the point then of having a separate plastic recycling container. I assumed that although we do generate a bit of plastic, at least it is not too bad because it is being recycled. As it is not being recycled, surely it would be much more sensible to get people to throw it straight into general waste so they realised this and could then make more of an effort to cut their plastic consumption down

Dreadful rant. It’s concise, lucid and well spelt. 1 out of 10.

Snigle
:o)

Don’t bother with the Tetra Pak style milk, juice, etc. cartons as they wither need to get shipped to a recycling centre or just get sent to landfil.

is it still the case that the nearest battery recycling facility is in France? I was told this used to be the case and it wasn’t financially viable to ship them so despite collections at school, they just went to landfill. Could be a load of old rubbish though!

Sorry snigle – I’ll try to drone on more next time

But the point still remains – why is there separate recycling when it all goes into general waste – let people know their plastic is being dumped

On connected tack, I heard that none of the green glass gets recycled in the UK because we don’t have any significant demand for green glass in this country. So I get that just gets dumped in landfill as well

BTW, did anyone see the film Soylent Green?

green glass gets used in road building.
But you are right, clear glass has far more uses!

There are lots of types of plastic, some are easily recycled, others are far harder, some are in demand some are not.

The problem is not that they don’t recycle, but that the stuff that can’t be recycled shouldn’t be on sale. Most cases the plastic used is not the only option.

I think in some cases it’s about starting to condition folk as much as it is about the actual value of recycling. I don’t mean that in a bad way either. Being in the habit of separating waste will mean that future recycling efforts will enjoy a faster take-up.