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Walker's Crisps

Grumpy Old Lemons Like You
Dod101
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Re: Walker's Crisps

#168791

Postby Dod101 » September 25th, 2018, 11:42 am

Personally I would just ban crisps thereby solving that problem

Dod

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#168822

Postby bungeejumper » September 25th, 2018, 1:33 pm

UncleIan wrote:Also the same plastics treated different ways causes different outcomes, so the hard plastic that yogurt pots are made of can be recycled, but when that same plastic is coloured black, the recycling machines can't spot it and identify it so it doesn't get recycled. I'm not sure if it was a regurgitated press release but I was reading something yesterday about experiments being done to replace black plant pots that most plants come in. If it works, expect to see the local garden centres full of taupe coloured pots instead. I kid you not.

Gardener's World? They ran quite a good feature on it last weekend. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b ... episode-25, 37 minutes in,)

We've been taking our black plastic plant pots to the recycling skip at our local gardening centre for many years. If they can recycle the pots (and I don't mean just stuff new plants into them, but melt them down), then so can anybody else.

In theory, at least. :) The problem seems to be that the recyclers' machines simply can't recognise black plastic objects of any description. The solution, presumably, would be to have places where only black plastic was recycled - but I can see that that would be logistically unachievable, because you'd probably only want two black plastic plants in the whole of the country and the transport costs would be too stupid.

Well, either that, or else you could simply turn over a proportion of all recycling plants to exclusively black plastic on the third Sunday of every month. Or would that solution be too obvious?

In the meantime, as Monty Don observed on GW, we must find out whether taupe-coloured flower pots are as good at growing plant roots as black ones. Life gets complicated, doesn't it?

BJ

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#168945

Postby redsturgeon » September 25th, 2018, 7:01 pm

Why taupe? What's wrong with terracotta?

John

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169146

Postby Gengulphus » September 26th, 2018, 12:59 pm

bungeejumper wrote:Well, either that, or else you could simply turn over a proportion of all recycling plants to exclusively black plastic on the third Sunday of every month. Or would that solution be too obvious?

It's obvious - but it's only a partial solution, to the part of the problem that is easily solved: recycling the black plastic once it's been sorted out from all the other stuff to be recycled. That sorting out of the stuff to be recycled is where the problem lies: current sorting machines can't cope with black plastic (and human sorting is too unreliable if you try to get people to do it for free, or too expensive if you try to employ people to do it).

What's needed is better sorting machines - but sorting out tonnes of highly varied material, a fair amount of which will be clarted up with all sorts of gunk, and doing it quickly and cheaply is not an easy problem!

On the actual subject of this thread, I believe crisp packets and the like are no more (and no less) difficult to sort out than other coloured plastic - but the actual recycling after the plastic has been separated out is messed up by the metal layer they contain (and likewise, if they were separated out as metal, recycling them would be messed up by the plastic layer they contain). A similar problem to that with disposable cups that was hitting the news earlier this year, with the problem for them being that they contain closely bonded paper and plastic layers. Mixed-material packaging like those would be a good target for phasing out...

Gengulphus

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169705

Postby redsturgeon » September 28th, 2018, 7:34 am

I have phased out Walkers (and all other crisps) as the easiest solution to this particular problem at a personal level. I think that was my point in the OP, why buy the stuff in the first place and then make some annoying protest about it...just don't buy the the things if you don't like the ecological impact.

Funny thing is that it is very simple to live a happy and fulfilling life without consuming crisps...Walkers or otherwise.

I used to be an avid consumer of crisps, soft drinks and chocolate bars. Now I have any of those things perhaps once or twice a year and really don't miss them in any way.

Similarly with all those microwave meals in black plastic trays. Every time I have the urge to buy a pasta and sauce ready meal, I remember that I can make a cheese sauce in less than five minutes using flour, butter, milk, cheese and a little nutmeg and either wait ten minutes for the dried pasta to boil or buy some fresh pasta and be ready to eat in four minutes.

Buy fresh ingredients and make stuff from scratch, much healthier for the body and the bank balance and did you know that home insurance is cheaper for those who buy home cooking ingredients?

John

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169717

Postby JohnB » September 28th, 2018, 8:50 am

As someone who litter picks a nature reserve regularly, there are 2 dangers with crisp companies producing biodegradable packaging

1) People will assume they can chuck the bags in the undergrowth with impunity, but in practice it will take significant time to rot, and be an eyesore and threat to wildlife.

2) Once some crisp packaging is known to be biodegradable, people will assume all is, and lots of undegradeable bags will be discarded.

The thing I hate most, people who flytip soil/garden waste in plastic bags. Why couldn't they empty the bags and take them home, rather than force me to excavate the bags from the soil

Apparently the black plastic people are considering switching to a deep indigo dye which looks black but machines can read.

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169718

Postby Watis » September 28th, 2018, 8:51 am

redsturgeon wrote:Buy fresh ingredients and make stuff from scratch, much healthier for the body and the bank balance and did you know that home insurance is cheaper for those who buy home cooking ingredients?

John


Really? Citation please.

I don't recall ever being asked about my culinary preferences when purchasing home insurance!

Watis

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169724

Postby Howyoudoin » September 28th, 2018, 9:19 am

It would appear that some have decided not to bother putting their crisps packets in an envelope before sending them back to Walkers and are just putting them straight into the post box with a sticky label on them.

Royal Mail: Stop putting crisp packets in post boxes

https://news.sky.com/story/royal-mail-s ... s-11509005

Some people really are thick, aren't they?

HYD

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169727

Postby vrdiver » September 28th, 2018, 9:22 am

JohnB wrote:1) People will assume they can chuck the bags in the undergrowth with impunity, but in practice it will take significant time to rot, and be an eyesore and threat to wildlife.

2) Once some crisp packaging is known to be biodegradable, people will assume all is, and lots of undegradeable bags will be discarded.

The thing I hate most, people who flytip soil/garden waste in plastic bags. Why couldn't they empty the bags and take them home, rather than force me to excavate the bags from the soil

Litter as an eyesore is annoying I grant you, but if it's not ecologically damaging, then that is less of a worry (as in, less of a problem in terms of damage to the environment etc.) I don't know what the time to rot is, but assume it's measured in a year or two, rather than hundreds of years? As it rots, it's integrity must break down, so animals will be less at risk of getting it jammed into their digestive tracts or wrapped around their necks etc?

For many people, the issue of litter is esthetic, so I'm not sure that the current non-litterers would start discarding stuff just because it was biodegradable. Perhaps some might, but I don't see that happening with, say, other biodegradable rubbish. People seem to litter or to not, rather than selectively dump some of their rubbish.

I suspect there is only a small subset of flytippers who have decided that whilst they can't be bothered to take their stuff to household recycling (whether or not they are charged) they will take time to tidy up after themselves after tipping. Most are probably more interested in exiting the scene before somebody notes their license plate!

VRD

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169738

Postby JohnB » September 28th, 2018, 9:43 am

Odd people, flytippers. They will often go 50m into the woods to dump their loads, as if that's less suspicious than dropping it at the woodland edge. Biodegradeable plastic is tricky, as the breakdown rates vary hugely depending on conditions. A figure for breakdown in the council compost heaps could be orders of magnitude faster than hanging dry in the brambles

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169769

Postby UncleEbenezer » September 28th, 2018, 10:48 am

JohnB wrote:1) People will assume they can chuck the bags in the undergrowth with impunity, but in practice it will take significant time to rot, and be an eyesore and threat to wildlife.

2) Once some crisp packaging is known to be biodegradable, people will assume all is, and lots of undegradeable bags will be discarded.

You could be right, but surely we can test that supposition today? Are there people who will throw down paper, card, or even metal litter (which eventually corrodes away), but at the same time will diligently dispose of their plastic in a bin?

I would put my hand up to littering when the object in question is itself entirely natural: an apple core or orange peel (though somewhere discrete where it's not an eyesore). But I'd draw the line at anything artificial, even something like loopaper that will biodegrade much quicker than the orange peel.

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169773

Postby UncleEbenezer » September 28th, 2018, 10:58 am

Watis wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:Buy fresh ingredients and make stuff from scratch, much healthier for the body and the bank balance and did you know that home insurance is cheaper for those who buy home cooking ingredients?

John


Really? Citation please.

I don't recall ever being asked about my culinary preferences when purchasing home insurance!

Watis

Likewise, I'd like a citation on that one.

I did recently half-hear something on the radio that might be relevant: they were talking about how they guess from your supermarket shopping whether you cook at home. That might just possibly feed in to home insurance if you buy it from the same supermarket as your groceries, or from someone associated with them through a tracking scheme like nectar.

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169785

Postby Watis » September 28th, 2018, 11:13 am

UncleEbenezer wrote:
Watis wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:Buy fresh ingredients and make stuff from scratch, much healthier for the body and the bank balance and did you know that home insurance is cheaper for those who buy home cooking ingredients?

John


Really? Citation please.

I don't recall ever being asked about my culinary preferences when purchasing home insurance!

Watis

Likewise, I'd like a citation on that one.

I did recently half-hear something on the radio that might be relevant: they were talking about how they guess from your supermarket shopping whether you cook at home. That might just possibly feed in to home insurance if you buy it from the same supermarket as your groceries, or from someone associated with them through a tracking scheme like nectar.




Or, indeed, anyone prepared to pay for the information!

Many years ago, I received a voucher through the post containing money off vouchers for cat food.

That's interesting, I thought. How do they know I have a cat - but not a dog, say. Then it dawned on me - Clubcard!

This was in the days before we fully understood that companies might use loyalty schemes for purposes other than retaining customers.

Watis

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169811

Postby UncleEbenezer » September 28th, 2018, 12:30 pm

Watis wrote:Or, indeed, anyone prepared to pay for the information!

Much less likely in the era of data protection. Indeed, even within a scheme (like nectar again), they're a lot more constrained now than they were as recently as six months ago, let alone before the original data protection act.

Pursuing this line to the personal, I might be losing out on my insurance by having for many years always been careful to opt out of anyone's "can we send you junkmail" options. Let alone the second tickbox you sometimes see to share my data with "selected third parties".

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169860

Postby Alaric » September 28th, 2018, 2:12 pm

Watis wrote:This was in the days before we fully understood that companies might use loyalty schemes for purposes other than retaining customers.
Watis


That's relatively benign. If they have a marketing budget to potentially spend on offers to entice you to their stores, sending a voucher for something you might buy has to be a gain for both parties. What you don't want is the information of your address to be sold to a gang of cat-nabbers.

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169925

Postby redsturgeon » September 28th, 2018, 6:12 pm

UncleEbenezer wrote:
Watis wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:Buy fresh ingredients and make stuff from scratch, much healthier for the body and the bank balance and did you know that home insurance is cheaper for those who buy home cooking ingredients?

John


Really? Citation please.

I don't recall ever being asked about my culinary preferences when purchasing home insurance!

Watis

Likewise, I'd like a citation on that one.

I did recently half-hear something on the radio that might be relevant: they were talking about how they guess from your supermarket shopping whether you cook at home. That might just possibly feed in to home insurance if you buy it from the same supermarket as your groceries, or from someone associated with them through a tracking scheme like nectar.


Yes indeed I heard the same on R4 last week...no actual citation I'm afraid.

John

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169929

Postby TUK020 » September 28th, 2018, 6:23 pm

Lot's of enjoyable rants here.

Not sure I get the link between home-cooking and cat-nabbers though.......

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169932

Postby jfgw » September 28th, 2018, 6:44 pm

UncleIan wrote:
vrdiver wrote:Getting the issue into the public domain, associating the issue with the specific brand


I think I saw some some "news" of a lass that made her graduation dress out of empty Walkers packets, to make the same point about unrecyclable packets.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-45558074

What better way is there to protest about unrecyclable waste than to recycle it into a dress?

Julian F. G. W.

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#169940

Postby scotia » September 28th, 2018, 6:58 pm

JohnB wrote:As someone who litter picks a nature reserve regularly

Up in my neck of the woods its Buckie Bottles that are deposited - within 10 metres, in either direction, of two litter bins. I suppose I should be grateful that our current addicts deposit the intact bottles, unlike earlier yobs who used to break them first.

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Re: Walker's Crisps

#170086

Postby Rhyd6 » September 29th, 2018, 3:24 pm

Redsturgeon, would just like to say thank you for raising this subject. We were at a quiz last night and tied for first place and the deciding question was "which company has been inundated with empty crisp packets"? Thanks to you we won £20 :)

R6


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