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Do you recycle?

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Tryphena Absent

15:23 / 06.07.05

I notice that a lot of people here are having trouble recycling plastics, the vast majority of Camden tube stations have plastic bottle/drinking can facilites by their exits. Doesn't this happen in any of the other boroughs? Perhaps it's cheeky but you could just stick all your plastic in a bag and recycle it on the way to work. I used to do this with newspapers all the time but I did live in Camden at the time and within walking distance of my workplace.

If you're in London and you want to know where your nearest recycling facility is Recycle for London can tell you.

Tryphena Absent

15:27 / 06.07.05

Oh I just realised that Lula already linked to Recycle for London!

15:50 / 06.07.05

Why can't we make supermarkets charge 10p or something per plastic bag and force them to take back and recycle all the pointless packaging they wrap round fruit and veg?
A great big 'HELL YEAH!' to that. Point-of-sale recycling is something many people in Local Authorities want to introduce, but the supermarkets blame the producers who blame the consumer. 'We'd stop packaging if it didn't make us money but 'market forces' dictate we can't, it's uncompetitive'. The bottle banks are the closest we'll get for a while I think.

I looked up some statistics for the UK and found that the percentage of domestic recycling is increasing but we're producing about the same amount of unrecycled waste- about 450 kilos per person per year.
Of course, industrial and commercial waste accounts for well over twice what we produce in municipal waste... I wonder how much of that gets recycled?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:55 / 06.07.05

God... don't mention supermarket packaging.

I'll go off on a rant about Morrison's...

...I'm warning you. Stop now before it's too late.

19:17 / 06.07.05

Quantum, Defra did a survey of municipal waste for the year 2003/2004.

The total amount of municipal waste has fallen slightly to an estimated 29.1 million tonnes in England in 2003/04 compared to 29.4 million tonnes in 2002/03, a decrease of 1.0 per cent.

In total, 27.9 per cent (8.1 million tonnes) of municipal waste had some sort of value (recycling, composting, energy from waste) recovered from it in 2003/04, a rise from 24.7 per cent (7.3 million tonnes) in 2002/03.

The proportion of municipal waste being recycled or composted increased from 15.6 per cent in 2002/03 to 19.0 per cent in 2003/04. The proportion of waste incinerated with energy recovery has remained roughly constant at just under 9 per cent.

The proportion of municipal waste being disposed of in landfill has continued to decrease from 75 per cent in 2002/03 to 72 per cent in 2003/04.

The actual tonnage of municipal waste disposed of in landfill has also decreased again from 22.1 million tonnes in 2002/03 to 20.9 million tonnes in 2003/04.

At the Council where I work we have recycling bins all over the place for paper, and people still put paper in the bin. When I see it I fish it out and put it in the recycling bins and people look at me like I'm clinically insane.

19:17 / 06.07.05

Plastics are no prob in Portsmouth, they collect them along with cans, paper and card. One wheelie bin load per household. Hoorah! (I reserve the right to retract that hoorah should it turn out that the un-benefits pumped out from the truck that picks them up outweighs the benefits of recycling).

But what about foil? I've heard that some boroughs have issued instructions not to put foil in the recycling bins - not because they can't recycle foil but because they can't recycle that shiny, foil-impersonating plastic that some crisp packets and cake wrappers are made of. People were bunging it in assuming that it was foil, (and fair enough, when the bastard wrapper boasts "FOIL WRAPPED!") Anyone else heard of a foil ban?

19:24 / 06.07.05

Shit, sorry Quantum, I read your post wrong - you're asking about the commerical and industrial recycling stats.

There is information on the Defra site on industrial and commercial recycling with downloadable excel tables, but to summarise;

In 1998/99 Industrial and Commercial waste totalled 75 million tonnes. Of this about 50 million tonnes was attributable to industry and 25 million to commerce. The individual sector that produced the most waste was the basic metals sector over 9 million tonnes of waste. This was followed by the food, drink and tobacco industry at more than 7 million tonnes and the coke, oil, gas, electricity and water industries at just under 7 million tonnes.

The survey was designed to exclude wastes reprocessed on site and effluent which leaves the site via the sewer; effluent or other liquid or sludge waste removed by tanker for subsequent treatment or disposal would be included. Landfill disposal was the main waste management option employed for almost half the wastes arising. 30 per cent of the waste arising was recycled and a further 7 per cent was re-used. Industrial companies are more inclined to recycle or re-use their waste (44 per cent) than are commercial companies (24 per cent).

I think 44% of industrial waste is quite good in some ways.

19:44 / 06.07.05

Are there weird restrictions and regulations about composting in urban areas in the UK? Everyone keeps talking about having to get special composting bins. It's fairly easy to knock together a container to compost in.

In point of fact, we just have a big ol' pile, smack on the ground, in the corner of the back yard, but then we have an awful lot of space.

19:47 / 06.07.05

Rats. They have rats in London.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:47 / 06.07.05

Massive ones. Like two foot long.

Tryphena Absent

20:03 / 06.07.05

Most people only have tiny gardens in London. I definitely don't have room to have an open compost heap tucked away but a bin in the corner with a plant in front of it would be fine. I want a kitchen waste digester but my SO says they smell too much for him to bear.

20:08 / 06.07.05

Well, yes. Our pile is pretty regularly visited by various critters; possums and raccoons mostly. Probably the occasional rodent, though they likely don't make repeat visits - we have stray cats who hang about the garden.

I can understand the rat issue - especially if you're in a London flat with a teensy garden, and you don't have a lot of grass cuttings or leaves to cover the pile with (it's far smellier if the compost is mostly food leavings).

I suppose my question is, can't you just use a regular trash bin and ventilate it, or knock together a box out of scrap wood? I've seen special composting bins for sale here, too, and they're ridiculously pricey. All you're doing is providing a space for stuff to rot in, after all; it's not a particularly high-tech process, and the microbes and things don't care if their house is expensive.

Tryphena Absent

20:28 / 06.07.05

I can buy one from Camden Council for a fiver, so cheaper than your average bin.

This area has loads of animals, cats, urban foxes and squirrels and they dig up plants. So far they've almost killed my hydrangea and killed two other new plants and all of my pots have to be put on chairs/windowsills when I'm not outside so an open compost heap isn't a great idea. I'd only end up spending money on a garden broom. The compost bin has a lid so... sometime very soon!

21:55 / 06.07.05

Kitchen Waste Digesters like the Bokashi one don't smell if you do it properly. You just have to make sure to chop up the waste rather than hoy big bits in, and cover them up completely with the Bokashi.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

06:25 / 07.07.05

Of course, lots of us don't have any garden at all...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

06:27 / 07.07.05

May check out that Bokashi thing, though- sorry, missed the word "kitchen" the first time I read it.

Tryphena Absent

20:29 / 07.07.05

And you can always use the compost as window box soil.

10:11 / 19.07.05

Does anyone have links or ideas of shops who do environment friendly body care products like lotions and shower gel? We have a couple of health shops near me but they are very limited on stuff and it's rather expensive (think clarins prices), I don't mind paying a bit more but theose prices are a tad steep for me.
I used to go to Lush but see Argh Rage etc thread for the reason I want to go elsewhere.

14:09 / 19.07.05

No idea about the shower gel, but I have to share my new-found joy with Ecover. Truly, I am in love.

Hackney council have given me a little blue bucket in which to put our kitchen scraps, so that they can take it away every fortnight to make lovely lovely compost. However, it really starts to pong during that second week, and when I emptied it into the council's bigger receptacle there was something approaching foam at the bottom. It was grim. We are expected to keep these little blue buckets in our kitchens. I have a feeling Hackney council didn't quite think this one through. Does anyone else get their potato peelings taken away for composting? Do they take them more frequently than once a fortnight?

My stomach is churning again at the memories....

14:32 / 19.07.05

If you either stir it or alternate dry stuff with wet stuff, it'll stink less. The stink is anaerobic bacteria doing their thing -- aerobic bugs don't smell that bad. So a well-aerated bucket gets it going well.

I can't really be bothered myself, but the smell doesn't bug me that much when I'm dumping it out.

I do turn the big pile every so often and put leaves/clippings in layers so it won't stink up the yard, though.

Goodness Gracious Meme

16:00 / 19.07.05

Thanks Olula, for the link to the '52 Weeks' book, think I may grab that.

Here: recycle glass, paper and buy ecover/organically/sustainably-farmed products (but admittedly not constantly, it varies according to my budget).

Those wind turbines look fantastic, and will try and dig out ref, but have also heard mention of possible grants for them.

Why can't we make supermarkets charge 10p or something per plastic bag

Interesting.

These days I shop at Lidl, which has been doing this for yonks. Partly out of cost-cutting, I imagine(it's an ultra discount supermarket) but it *works*, most people I see either buy one set of Lidl bags(which are decently-enough made to stand lots of reuse) and resuse or bring rucksacks.

Goodness Gracious Meme

16:03 / 19.07.05

My sustainability concerns are always in balance with my budgetary ones, as sometimes I cannot *afford* to shop in the way that I would wish to, or in that if some of my groceries are cheap/non-sustainable, that means I can afford to buy, for example, recycled loo roll.

18:41 / 19.07.05

'In 1998/99 Industrial and Commercial waste totalled 75 million tonnes' Defra via lula

30% of that was recycled, so 25m tonnes. Leaving 50m tonnes to go to landfill compared to about 22m tonnes from municipal waste (26m tonnes household waste of which 14.5 % recycled against a target of 25%), so if you recycled absolutely all of your waste that would be half as much as you cause to go to landfill sites.

As it is, the amount the average UK person recycles of their household waste is five percent of the rubbish they produce that goes to landfill.
Now add on the ecological cost of their car.
Now consider that the UK is better than most countries in the world at recycling.

Grr. Argh.

22:33 / 19.07.05

Now consider that the UK is better than most countries in the world at recycling.

Aiiii. According to? Help me out Quantum, I thought we were pretty poor. Even just by European standards.

Tryphena Absent

22:55 / 19.07.05

But compared to the rest of the world how bad is Europe?

Goodness Gracious Meme

14:26 / 30.09.05

Could equally go in 'gives me a happy' but as from 2 weeks time we (and I think 90% of Brighton and Hove) are getting pavement collection big green boxes.

Hurrah!

14:42 / 30.09.05

After an epic battle with the local council refuse collection department to get a new wheelie bin (a battle I have now finally won!), I feeling very positive about the council's recycling scheme. All the recycling stuff (and there has been lots as we've dealt with a mountain of packaging with moving in and buyind household goods etc.) is efficiently uplifted whenever we put it out.

It's the stuff they won't recycle that would be left in the street to feed rats, cats and foxes every week while we had no wheelie bin. Have been combing this thread for ideas about increasing the amount that can be recycled, and there are lots, so that we aren't submerged in rubbish here.

Maybe that was Lambeth Council's plan all along, to maximise our use of their recycling scheme.

15:59 / 30.09.05

I've got a box at last! woot!

Tryphena Absent

10:08 / 25.10.05

I thought Londoners might be interested in the CRN.

10:21 / 25.10.05

Hooray for Edinburgh council. They have begun a programme of putting more recycling bins around the streets. We now have one for paper and one for cardboard, cans and plastic in our street. We'll still have to lug bottles down to the supermarket, but it's a great step forward.

Can you recycle plastic wrapping anywhere? Sometimes it's well-nigh impossible to get vegetables that aren't in those fucking plastic trays and wrapped in plastic and I reckon I throw out more of that than I do plastic bottles.

Tryphena Absent

10:28 / 25.10.05

I think that generally it's a case of if the recycling bin specifies plastic bottles than you can't put wrappers in it. If it's a general plastics bin than you can put any type of plastic bag in it and most clear plastic as well.

10:37 / 25.10.05

Would that include harder stuff as well? I wonder how much of our landfill is chunky bits of plastic from furniture, office supplies, storage containers, tupperware, that sort of stuff.

Tryphena Absent

10:45 / 25.10.05

I suspect most of the hard stuff can be recycled but it probably needs to go somewhere else. I read an article recently that said all household plastic can now be recycled technically. It's just that most places don't have the facilities to do so. I don't know how you check an article like that out.

11:42 / 25.10.05

I keep meaning to post about my notebooks --I've been using Banana Paper notebooks by Ecopapers. I found them originally at Office Depot, but now I order them online. I wish more stores would carry them, Office Depot seems to have stopped.

The ecological stats are, they're made with banana production waste. More about that here.

But they're *great* because they're as cheap as ordinary cheap notebooks, and they're very good quality --they're twin-wire bound, they have hard back covers, and the paper is actually a bit heavier than notebook paper. Plus I find that 8 x 10 is really a perfect size for a notebook. Also, they're college-ruled.

12:55 / 25.10.05

Loomis-re your hate of packaging- have you thought about getting your vegetables/ fruit from an organic box supplier- rather than a super market?
It is slightly more expensive, but its seasonal, organic and locally sourced- and there's virtually no packaging- just fruit in a box and even the box gets recycled every week.

We get a weekly box from Abel & Cole which is about £12 for 7-8 veggies- and will last us well into the weekend (there are two of us) i just found this company that covers edinburgh -Grow wild if its of any use... i personally hate all the packaging that super markets give you- this is one way round it...

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