DEFRA OPENS CONSULTATION ON STANDARDISING RECYCLING COLLECTION ACROSS ENGLAND

[Mr Gus]

https://resource.co/article/defra-opens ... ss-england

We are all aware of council to council area recycling deficiencies, some are lagging behind by a good 15 years on others, if this passes then it will mean a lot of catch up being played out or deferred, but should kick start the wider market for lesser recycled goods at this point (theoretically)

In the meantime I see some supermarkets now recycling crisp packets, biscuit wraps & the like (via drop off bins) doubtless big business will play a influential role that the govt has ignored from the mouths of public.

[Bugtownboy]

That’s encouraging - we (South Somerset) have recently had a change to kerbside collections, being extended to plastic trays, pots, small electrical items, batteries & tetrapak style cartons.

Local Tesco has introduced a plastic film/bag/soft plastic collection point.

Since these changes were introduced, our non-recyclable waste is virtually nil - would only half-fill a carrier bag in the three week collection interval. I’m sure we could improve on this.

We compost all non cooked food/garden waste and don’t dispose of cooked food waste - there isn’t any.

It is easy for us - retired, space to keep bins, easy access to kerb side. I accept this won’t be the case for everyone.

Just hope what we collect as recyclable is actually recycled.

[Mr Gus]

Burnt for power is not recycling (I agree)
Nor is shipping your **it to 3rd world countries to be picked through & burnt or piled & inevitably catch light.

Off-topic, why are we importing so many old tyres into this country? there was a recent piece somewhere stating that the water in imported tyre stacks was introducing foreign strains of mosquitos whose eggs can lay dormant for ages & insecticide treatment is hit & miss, ..seems that the transportation aspect needs tidying up & climate proofing.

[Stinsy]

My local council is a walking example of the shitshow that occurs when you allow these incompetent organisations to make decisions.

We used to have a complex system of 9 different boxes and bags into which our waste was to be sorted and an acompanyingly complex system of collection. For example: the red boxes containing glass and tins would be collected every other Tuesday except when such a Tuesday was in the first 4 days of the month, the refuse collectors would further sort the glass into various colours and separate the tins into a moving vehicle in the middle of traffic. That is just one of the 9 boxes/bags! Many older people couldn't understand the system, other people simply didn't have the space to store all the bags/boxes. Etc. You get the point change was needed.

So following consultation the council completely changed the entire system. I went to one of the public meetings and the overwhelming point that was made repeatedly by many members of the public who attended was that they wanted the system employed by surrounding councils with 3x wheelie bins, one for recycling, one for non-recyclable waste, and another for garden waste. However the new system involved 7 boxes/bags and spending millions of pounds on custom refuse vehicles. The system of collection was much simpler (alternating weeks for all recycling and non-recyclable/garden) but overall it involved spending vast amounts of public money on a system that looked and felt VEWRY similar to the one that had preceded it.

Part of the project was to switch from having a private contractor collect the refuse on behalf of the council, to this being done directly by council employees. However council employees where not able to complete the same routes that had been achieved previously so more people where employed and more (very expensive) vehicles where procured. However the council soon resorted to dumping all of our carefully sorted waste into a single container and tipping it into a standard refuse vehicle.

A year or so later the entire system was abandoned. We now have the 3-bin system the people wanted in the first place. Just a year later and many millions of public money wasted.

[Mr Gus]

That's a fine example of a council fouling its tax payer funded trousers & binning them with a shrug, someone needs shooting for that fubar.

As a kid working on the council in the school holidays the Hydraulics for the bin lorry crussher mechanism was always the costly point of repair necessitating many days off the road (often 1 or more per working week).

With the change over to very expensive EV bin lorries I'm curious as to whether the hydraulics have been able to be changed for the better, otherwise there will be better economy of mileage vs diesel but same old problem with downtime.

So with that in mind maybe a bin lorry covered with solar panels running the length & width of the roof actually has legitimate use on a vehicle for once

[Bugtownboy]

Let’s hope it’s standardised to something that works, then.

Ours is simple - one box paper, card and cartons, second box glass, weighted bag for rigid plastic, tins and foil. Small sealable box for food. Recyclable collected weekly. Admittedly, you need space to store and commitment to separate.

Wheelie bin for non recyclable collected every three weeks - though I’m sure this could be extended to once a month. Or, in our case, once a year

[AE-NMidlands]

The root-cause of the trouble is that local authorities have for decades been stripped of money and expertise, so have had to put themselves (and us all) in the hands of contractors who are just looking after the interests of their shareholders - by law. That means they have invented many unique systems to lock the councils in to their local recycling and recovery process, with different rules to everywhere else.

I cannot understand how our local single recycling bin copes with both glass and paper/cardboard... The answer is of course that it doesn't: it is designed to maximise profits by ensuring that cardboard is contaminated by broken glass and so can go to their incinerator, with the glass providing cheap (free) silica to mop up the nasties that get in to it and generate the inert slag they need to minimise landfill costs.

It's obviously time to get rid of all the different systems and standardise it around the country. Unfortunately there are lots of "facilities" with guaranteed contracts and it will take decades to unravel them all. We may have experimented with a wide range of ways of doing things (at massive public expense) but it will take a big personality (and an exceptionally capable politician) to get us out of the mess we are in no matter what any public consultation reveals. I am not optimistic...

As has been said elsewhere today, https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ife-uk-aoe

More money is being spent destroying the environment than protecting it, MPs’ report finds

and https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... l-priority

green campaigners questioned whether the prime minister’s rhetoric was matched by action, and accused him of “hypocrisy” over measures that could increase greenhouse gas emissions in the UK and overseas.

[spread-tee]

Spot on that person

My nephew was an engineer at one of the big waste companies until last year building a pretty sophisticated plant for separating the various waste streams. But the company has been sold to an American investment house, they have immediately split the business into three, waste collection, recycling and waste incineration/generation. No prizes for guessing that the recycling is the loss maker they are ditching/starving and the others are the earners they are keeping. Needless to say the local councils/ council tax payers will pick up the bill for extra landfill tax as they have a duty to collect household rubbish but will be forced to landfill the recyclables with no end use.

The investment company will do very well thank you very much and the trickle up economy is bolstered a bit more, Kerrching

d pears eet

[nowty]

Last week I had to go 250 miles north to take my mother to her sisters funeral. I took the opportunity to fill the car with various bits of DIY rubbish, i.e., concrete, bricks, rubble, cement board, etc,

Why ?, because the recycling centres in Hampshire would have cost me £20 to £30 to take it, but the centre near my parents its still free. Another example of the non joined up thinking which creates unintended consequences.

[Stig]

I've had an old fridge-freezer sitting on my drive for 4 weeks now waiting for Veolia (the council's contractor) to collect it - just another 12 days to go until my booked slot comes up. (and it cost me £56 for this service) In the mean time some enterprising soul has nicked the compressor out of it - so much for my being responsible and getting it recycled through the correct channels so the nasty greenhouse gas was safely recovered.