The different schemes for recycling around the country continue to amaze me. I guess there is some complex economics behind them with local authorities juggling national targets and contractual obligations with waste management companies.
Sheffield has separate blue bins for waste paper which are collected monthly and that’s it for doorstep collected recycling. I think this is pretty poor.
Derbyshire Dales next door has a separate green lidded bin for garden waste only which is given out irrespective of whether or not you have a garden.
Lambeth borough where I have had a London flat for some time collects a range of recyclable materials every week. You just put all paper, card, plastic bottles, cans and glass in a handy orange bin bag and leave this out alongside the rubbish wheely bins. It is later sorted by hand for processing. This is a great scheme to my mind.
So why did Sheffield just choose to do this basic paper service? Must be to meet a target at the lowest possible cost I think. Does the same apply in Derbyshire but they decided they could do garden waste even more cheaply than paper? And why can Lambeth afford to do what appears to be a Rolls Royce service when compared with the others? Are there different financial incentives or are they green and saintly?
We also have a Lambeth-style scheme here in Cardiff, albeit with green bags instead of orange. You can put just about anything recyclable in them, with the bizarre exception of cardboard, and they are sorted out wherever they get taken.
The most astonishing thing as far as I’m concerned is that even with such an easy method of recycling, there are still people who don’t bother.
Frequently I think this comes down to the Councils having somebody to sell the materials on to. Here in Liverpool the council is increasingly frustrated at still being unable to offer plastic recycling because nobody wants to buy it off them. Meanwhile they offer most other services either at doorstop or at a central collection point.
It’s possibly also down to the cost of landfill. Here in Bath all landfill waste is taken to Wiltshire somewhere, miles away. I guess that helps lessen the cost of recycling (which happens to be rather excellent, with pretty much everything taken from the doorstep. Unlike Cardiff they even take cardboard (with the organic waste rather than with the paper).
I agree with Mark that it’s astonishing that people don’t bother when it is made so easy. A solution I have suggested in letters to the local paper etc. is a system of fines for people who throw away recyclable waste. It sounds rather draconian, but there are a number of people who I really don’t think will bother unless it costs them money not to. These are probably the same sort of people as those in my office who throw paper into the bin that is right next to the one for recycling. Unbelievable.
The orange bag scheme is very distinctive in south london. Mountains of them have been piling up in the streets around the balham/wandsworth common area for the last couple of weeks without being collected…
We’ve green boxes here in West Norfolk, which in theory are wonderful, taking paper, card, tins and plastic, but have a design flaw (no way to stop contents blowing out) and are collected at rather random times (so I often miss collections). The implementation problems and general confusion about the rules means that a lot of people are giving up on it. (Where did the trackbacks go? More about this and other natural topics on my website.)
We had blue wheelie bins for paper recycling in Hull.
But they were only collected about once a month, and there were no details as to when they would be collected.
When I finally moved out of Hull, last month, my paper recycling wheelie bin was stuffed full of about 2 years worth of paper waste. And no prospect of being emptied.
Recycling should not be about some funny little bloke with a beard who used to be an MP thinking he knows better, obviously recycling should reflect sound economics. For instance, the full cost to society should be reflected in the price of disposal. The landfill tax means that it is now more expensive to landfill waste. Has the landfill tax been imposed as the government wants piles of rubbish in the streets, since its too expensive to dispose of, and it wants more tax revenue? No. Has the government introduced the tax (which it will no doubt raise) so that winging lefties like this bunch on your site get all their “out throw” recycled to save the world, and make rich people pay more council tax higher? No. The tax has been levvied to embark on a transition from unsustainable lanfilling towards a situation where there are actually markets for certain recycled material.
What is the point of recycling material which knowbody wants? What is the point of recycling which uses up more energy to collect and incorporate into new output than using new material? There is no point unless one subscribes to some sort of crap ideology…
Some waste will always have to be landfilled. Is this a problem? No, not if it decomposes naturally. Other waste does not decompose so easily (and is produced from finite resources). For instance, plastics, can, thanks to the landfill tax be recycled. Creating markets for this stuff is a slow but sure process, it requires companies (yes companies, people who are in it for profit) to see that they can make money out of recycling (as they are doing and have done) to invest in new technologies (making the process more resource efficient and cheaper) and then sell the recycled material to manufacturers.
This whole area of politics and society is a minefield full of “green” idoits who claim to be saving the world, but really they often do entirely the opposite. The issue is about resource productivity, not about, recycling everthing so some of us brain washed Greenpeace members feel better. To substanciate this latter point I would draw your attention to the fact that Greenpeace is not a charity it is a limited company, and the board members are minted…
I am keen to recycle and try to do my bit, but would like more information on:
a) real energy costs of transport and processing, not just government box-ticking;
b) what actually happens to the goods we put in our recycling boxes.
In Kingston-upon-Thames they are collected fortnightly, and we must put glass, tins, plastic bottles and textiles in separate boxes, or in separate plastic bags above the newspaper box. This has the advantage of stopping paper blowing out and cuts down the labour of sorting.
However there are rumours that the goods go to China to be made into all the items we no longer make here. I remain to be convinced this is viable long-term and it must use up lots of fuel. Anyone with reliable information on these points?
Some of these posts are starting to ask the right questions. What DOES happen to the stuff we put out for recycling? The question is not whether we are behaving in a green enough manner, but is recycling actually cheaper and more environmentally friendly than manufacture from new? Where is the evidence?
Few UK industries use green glass, yet the glass recycling skips are full of wine bottles. How is the glass recycled? Why/how is it cheaper/more environmentally friendly to recycle glass? It’s just melted sand, after all, and used glass presumably has to be melted down in exactly the same was as newly manufactured glass.
For decades, people involved in paper making have managed their forests so that numbers of trees felled are matched by numbers newly planted. (If they don’t work this way they’ll run out of raw material and go bust.) Is paper recycling cheaper and less greenhouse gas-emitting than manufacture from new?
I’m tired of being told I should recycle everything when no source ever seems to give real information weighing up the cost benefits (economic and environmental). I don’t buy the argument that landfill space is at a premium: we’ve learned how to design and manage landfills extremely well over the past 20 years or so. Will the friends of the planet please give us more hard information and less invective?
I think it’s time for the UK to consider a unified system of waste recycling – there must be a way the councils can share best practice.
To answer Frank’s question on green glass – it’s shipped back to Germany for recycling – they use a lot of green glass. I’m not sure it’s a great solution – I think the experiments using glass in road building might be a better route.
Oh I’m so sick and tired of hearing how one council will do this and another not. It’s not just a case of standardisation, but whether there’s any value in recycling the goods. A contractor has to be willing to invest in the infrastructure at a price that the Council can meet.
Richard
Why cant there be a simple system for everybody to understand…the more difficult it is (and it is) the less chance people have of actually doing it – especially when they pay around £100 in council tax a month