Recycling: A great shining lie.

[JoyofBrex8889]

I am bitter. But not surprised. It turns out recycling is a fraud. Waste sent for recycling is getting incinerated. Or dumped in shipping containers in Malaysia.

It’s a great big swizz.

I am resolved to open burn all my plastic waste, or just drop it in the river. After all, if it is going to a dump in a third world nation, why not? It’s going to end up in the ocean or atmosphere one way or another! It saves a lot of effort and is a lot more honest than pretending any good comes of paying for the green-theatre of shipping this stuff around the planet.

[Itsallaguess]

It’s a great big swizz.

I think it's got a lot to do with the focus that we've got on GDP 'growth at all costs'.

It's 'action' in the form of additional regulations, which guarantees fresh GDP growth in almost all areas of public and private life, and I'm afraid that we should get used to such regulatory interventions, especially ones that can be dressed up in some form of 'we're doing it for the planet' sub-text.....difficult to argue against, isn't it?

If they came out and said 'we're going it for the GDP', I'd have a whole lot more respect...

The above isn't to suggest that it's not important to recycle, of course, but I think it's important to make sure that the end-to-end processes in such regulatory interventions are robust, and don't do anything that might undermine the original intentions of the regulations. That's clearly not the case with UK recycling, and I think that's a real shame.....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[AsleepInYorkshire]

It’s a great big swizz.

I think it's got a lot to do with the focus that we've got on GDP 'growth at all costs'.

It's 'action' in the form of additional regulations, which guarantees fresh GDP growth in almost all areas of public and private life, and I'm afraid that we should get used to such regulatory interventions, especially ones that can be dressed up in some form of 'we're doing it for the planet' sub-text.....difficult to argue against, isn't it?

If they came out and said 'we're going it for the GDP', I'd have a whole lot more respect...

The above isn't to suggest that it's not important to recycle, of course, but I think it's important to make sure that the end-to-end processes in such regulatory interventions are robust, and don't do anything that might undermine the original intentions of the regulations. That's clearly not the case with UK recycling, and I think that's a real shame.....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Our Conservative Government has committed us to zero carbon emissions by 2050. Another impossible task. The numbers will be dressed up by using "offsetting". So not really zero emissions. And we will achieve this "wonderful" result at the expense of third world countries.

I am not blaming government. They represent me. But I'm not ready to stick my chin out and take the blow for my excessive materialism.

I've checked that my Local Authority has a waste recycling policy that I approve of. It seems reasonable and they don't ship abroad. I'm not sure what I could have done if i found out that they did. I think the reality would be that I would do nothing. I might complain a little but soon get fed up with the bureaucracy.

I'm probably "alright jack"

AiY

[UncleEbenezer]

I've checked that my Local Authority has a waste recycling policy that I approve of. It seems reasonable and they don't ship abroad. I'm not sure what I could have done if i found out that they did. I think the reality would be that I would do nothing. I might complain a little but soon get fed up with the bureaucracy.

Sounds like a sensible/pragmatic attitude (you may be on the wrong board with it, and so am I).

The other thing we can do as investors is back businesses that do something positive - like finding real uses for waste plastics. Like this one, which is in my portfolio of crowdfunded startups (that is, me as member of the crowd having a flutter on it). Enough of those and we can perhaps make a dent in the problem.

[Dod101]

I do not know about helping GDP but I am amazed at the amount of unnecessary plastic wrapping that I throw into the general waste bin because my local council will not/cannot accept it for recycling. In fact I would say that most of my general waste is plastic. I have no idea what happens to paper, cans and so on that go in to the recycling bin but it makes me feel better. I have other things to be conc erned about because I can do nothing about it anyway.

Dod

[AsleepInYorkshire]

I do not know about helping GDP but I am amazed at the amount of unnecessary plastic wrapping that I throw into the general waste bin because my local council will not/cannot accept it for recycling. In fact I would say that most of my general waste is plastic. I have no idea what happens to paper, cans and so on that go in to the recycling bin but it makes me feel better. I have other things to be conc erned about because I can do nothing about it anyway.

Dod

I think my waste is the same. I always put plastic into recycling if it has a recycling code on it. I think I read somewhere that the machines can't always read the code so it doesn't always get sorted at the other end. So even if I think I've done my bit the system still falls short upstream from me

AiY

[swill453]

I think my waste is the same. I always put plastic into recycling if it has a recycling code on it. I think I read somewhere that the machines can't always read the code so it doesn't always get sorted at the other end.

Surely the codes are for us to read, not the machines. It would never occur to me that a recycling machine would be trying to read codes on waste. Mainly because if they were meant to be machine readable we'd have designed them differently.

Unless you know different?

Scott.

[AsleepInYorkshire]

I think my waste is the same. I always put plastic into recycling if it has a recycling code on it. I think I read somewhere that the machines can't always read the code so it doesn't always get sorted at the other end.

Surely the codes are for us to read, not the machines. It would never occur to me that a recycling machine would be trying to read codes on waste. Mainly because if they were meant to be machine readable we'd have designed them differently.

Unless you know different?

Scott.

Bu99er - there I was thinking I was being a really good boy for the planet.

It was this I read which seemed to indicate "sorting machines".

See what you think?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42703561
Why are some plastics able to be recycled while others are not?
Often packaging can consist of more than one polymer type, which makes it more difficult to recycle.
Problematic plastics include black plastic food trays, which are used by many supermarkets.
They are generally not collected as sorting machines are not able to detect them - the carbon black makes them invisible.

AiY

[bungeejumper]

I am bitter. But not surprised. It turns out recycling is a fraud. Waste sent for recycling is getting incinerated. Or dumped in shipping containers in Malaysia.

It’s a great big swizz.

Spot the logical flaw. Some councils are breaking the rules (and the law) and are exporting their recyclable waste instead of dealing with it like most of the others. So "recycling is a fraud". Honestly?

Okay, okay, I'll give you some latitude for irony because this is, after all, the Fool's special corner for miserable old gits. Just tell me that you don't really believe the cause is lost?

You'd have a better case if you simply observed that Indonesia alone dumps more plastic waste than almost anywhere else on earth, because they don't have rubbish collections, let alone recycling facilities, and there's simply nowhere else the plastic crap can go.

Alternatively, how's this for $6,800 a pop? https://www.archdaily.com/869926/this-h ... tic-bricks . Could probably be upscaled at substantially lower cost.

BJ

[Dod101]

[
It was this I read which seemed to indicate "sorting machines".

See what you think?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42703561
Why are some plastics able to be recycled while others are not?
Often packaging can consist of more than one polymer type, which makes it more difficult to recycle.
Problematic plastics include black plastic food trays, which are used by many supermarkets.
They are generally not collected as sorting machines are not able to detect them - the carbon black makes them invisible.

My local butcher - he is a good butcher - uses these black plastic trays for just about everything he sells. I often ask him not to bother, just use old fashioned greaseproof paper, sometimes he does and sometimes not. I have also asked them why they use non recyclable plastic trays anyway and they simply waffle, but I suspect it is cost. They incinerate well when I have my log burner on in the winter but at this time of year they have to go in the general waste.

Dod

[JohnB]

Plastic recycling relies on spectrograph analysis, so struggles with black trays. My annoyance with the war on plastic is that is all on the supply side, no-one seems to pick up the litter in the nature reserves I visit, and everyone ignores that nearly all plastic waste in the ocean comes from the third world (10 tons per year down the Thames, 1000000 tons down the Yangtzee), so rather than faff around in Waitrose we should be paying for rubbish collections in Asia.

[bungeejumper]

Just once, in my impoverished student days, I used a plastic bag as a firelighter. My defence: it was heading for minus 20C outside and the ancient coal heater in my crummy flat in Berlin was the only thing between me and hypothermia. (It was forecast to stay at minus 20 for two whole weeks, which it duly did. The wind from Poland can do that sort of thing.)

The firelighter trick worked perfectly. The bag turned instantly to sticky flammable glue that welded the lumps of coal into blazing activity. But Christ, the smoke - not just ordinary billowing smoke, but heavy black stuff that sneaked its way around the room in thin black ribbons. The fact that I was releasing this poisonous filth into the chimney above an inner-city street did not fill me with any kind of satisfaction. I have tried to be a better person ever since. But it's still on my conscience.

BJ

[JohnB]

The plastic bag of shavings is well known trick for lighting bonfires in our nature reserves. Fumes not a problem in 250 acres.

[UncleEbenezer]

and everyone ignores that nearly all plastic waste in the ocean comes from the third world (10 tons per year down the Thames, 1000000 tons down the Yangtzee),

Citation needed.

[JohnB]

Export of Plastic Debris by Rivers into the Sea

Christian Schmidt*†OrcidTobias Krauth†‡Stephan Wagner§

View Author Information
Cite This:Environ. Sci. Technol.2017512112246-12253
Publication Date:October 11, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368
Copyright © 2017 American Chemical Society

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368#

[bungeejumper]

Plastic recycling relies on spectrograph analysis, so struggles with black trays.

And with just about everything else that's black, I imagine. My local dairy farmer (100% organic, prize-winning animal-welfare stockman, and all the rest of it) wraps up his hay in enormous circular bales and then smothers them in thirty yards of black flexi-binding, just like every other farmer. And at the end of the season, what does he do with it? Off to the great recycling plant in the sky, of course.

BJ

[JohnB]

Effective recycling relies on 2 things, a product with the right composition to be recycled, and a bulk waste stream. Your farmer generates lots of one sort of plastic waste, so one side is OK, as someone could pick up bales of his plastic waste once a year, and the issue would merely be the chemical composition.

But a household waste stream is a different matter. You either need 10 different boxes in your kitchen and put the burden on the consumer, enforced by the bin police, or have sorting technology at the plant that can spot 5g bottle lids and flick them in the right bin, or just have fewer sorts of plastic.

The best thing the government could do is decide on 4 designations, and insist every item has a number 1-4 on it, and all councils collect the same 4 bins. And make clear that a pizza box is a 3, not a 2, as the cheese that will get smeared on the cardboard means it should go in the composting stream, not the paper one.

[GoSeigen]

Effective recycling relies on 2 things, a product with the right composition to be recycled, and a bulk waste stream. Your farmer generates lots of one sort of plastic waste, so one side is OK, as someone could pick up bales of his plastic waste once a year, and the issue would merely be the chemical composition.

But a household waste stream is a different matter. You either need 10 different boxes in your kitchen and put the burden on the consumer, enforced by the bin police, or have sorting technology at the plant that can spot 5g bottle lids and flick them in the right bin, or just have fewer sorts of plastic.

The best thing the government could do is decide on 4 designations, and insist every item has a number 1-4 on it, and all councils collect the same 4 bins. And make clear that a pizza box is a 3, not a 2, as the cheese that will get smeared on the cardboard means it should go in the composting stream, not the paper one.

Big problem: most of the people round here don't believe the government can do anything properly, so no matter how sensible it is they're not going to support this sort of plan -- well, not until most of them die off naturally over the next couple of decades anyway.


Happen to agree with the bags down the Yangtse point too, though I find it hard to believe a bit of human waste is going to bother a planet that has been producing robust lifeforms for billions of years.

GS

[bungeejumper]

Big problem: most of the people round here don't believe the government can do anything properly, so no matter how sensible it is they're not going to support this sort of plan -- well, not until most of them die off naturally over the next couple of decades anyway.

Big problem is that so many of the recycling "solutions" are handled and administered by the local authorities, most of which offer daily evidence that they couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery if their very lives depended on it.

The extraordinary national divergence of recycling/collecting standards alone is proof enough that either councils are not interested in achieving the sort of national uniformity of approach that might make it cost-efficient to process things like tricky black plastics - or, more probably, that they wouldn't have a clue how to go about it even if they tried.

Our council simply subcontracts everything out to the lowest bidder and then washes its hands of the public responsibility. Who cares if the crap ends up on a beach in Malaysia? The job's done, the crap's off the premises, so where's my OBE for outstanding eco service? And tell you what, while we're at it, let's run off a million or so 16-colour full-glossy brochures to tell all the householders what an excellent job we're doing on the environmental front.

You couldn't make it up. Which is why I'm not.

BJ

[Archtronics]

Plastic recycling relies on spectrograph analysis, so struggles with black trays.

And with just about everything else that's black, I imagine. My local dairy farmer (100% organic, prize-winning animal-welfare stockman, and all the rest of it) wraps up his hay in enormous circular bales and then smothers them in thirty yards of black flexi-binding, just like every other farmer. And at the end of the season, what does he do with it? Off to the great recycling plant in the sky, of course.

BJ

Has to be recycled now and your not allowed to keep any plastic waste more than 12 months.
All has to be kept on record too, your really in the [expletive deleted] if the farm assurance finds out you’ve burned stuff, £50000 fine.

Quite what the recycling companies are doing with it tho who knows, obvious answer is to ban as much single use stuff as possible.