Recycling is a load of rubbish.

[Sp00n]

So you watched the video... and thought it was a good idea?

Yea I'm still lost, 3 strikes idea is dumb but slave labour still sounds like a good idea to me.

What's the problem? Have I missed something blindingly obvious?

 

[Flibster]

what i find strange, that if you live in a house they drive you mad with recycling

but if you live in a block of flats, they don't enforce recycling at all

Not entirely true. I live in a flat and I can get a composter from the council for free.

Not entirely sure what I'd do with it as we don't have a garden...

 

[Sp00n]

Sell compost on ebay

 

[Jonny69]

I recently watched a Penn & Teller Bull**** episode that completely wiped that myth out of the water.
Yes it was America but I'm sure it transposes to here.

here's the first 10 mins and the other 2 are also there - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzLebC0mjCQ

I'm not even going to bother watching that since the whole of industry thinks landfilling is a bad thing. Millions of tonnes of rubbish piling up annually at a rate that can't be sustained vs recovering, making an environmental gain and a source of raw materials.

Slow round of applause for those guys I'm afraid, what a pair of plums.

its funny how melting glass to be reshaped takes more energy then melting the sand to make glass.

your source for this statement?


mine
http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/InformationSheets/Glass.htm
If recycled glass is used to make new bottles and jars, the energy needed in the furnace is greatly reduced. After accounting for the transport and processing needed, 315kg of CO2 is saved per tonne of glass melted.

Energy requirements:

New glass = 55 MJ/kg
Recycled glass = 50 MJ/kg

From Ashby (2009) Materials and the Environment

Figures derived from a mixture of academic work, industry average and direct measurement.

What you'll notice is there is only 5 MJ difference, which isn't a lot. If you drive your bottles to a bottle bank, chances are you'll tip the balance out of favour of recycling (in terms of energy). For reference there is about 30 MJ of energy in a litre of petrol.

 

[bitslice]

If you drive your bottles to a bottle bank, chances are you'll tip the balance out of favour of recycling

"After accounting for the transport and processing needed"

so I'm assuming they like to factor in CO2 savings as well as energy?

The social benefits would include being aware of what we consume and not having to live next door to a landfill. A lot of American studies discount that issue as they have so much land, although you still use petrol to drive to the landfill regardless of where you put it, so locating it next to a city is always the first choice.

edit.
I get roughly 16MJ/kg for glass?
http://issuu.com/peinternational/docs/life_cycle_assessment__lca__of_container_glass

 

[A[L]C]

For those of you that seem convinced that most of your recycling goes to landfill, this is where most of it actually goes. Companies like this...

http://www.sita.co.uk/

...where it is sorted and baled (like what Greebo used to do) and sent abroad for recycling. Not much is sent to landfill because high enough landfill taxes have been put in place to stop businesses and councils doing it.

Unfortunately, the fact that it's environmentally undesirable to landfill isn't enough to stop people doing it, so you have to hit them financially because it's the only language they understand. It's quite a simple model and it works.

I actually work for Sita.

Our company direction is to move as much as possible away from landfill. Recycling is becoming more and more important. The cost of landfill tax is getting so high that it is no longer financially viable to dump everything in a hole in the ground.

 

[guyfawkes5]

I assume the basic arguments as to the merits of recycling have been had, but without reading the thread...

...has anyone made fun of the choice of thread title yet?

 

[Curunen]

What annoys me is that in my area you can only recycle plastic in bottle format, any other kind of plastic tubs/containers etc have to go in the normal waste...

I agree with you. Instead of being so very forward with this recycling thing they should look at the manufacturers first and get them to reduce packaging.

I agree with those comments. There's a lot of unnecessary manufaturer packaging, which if changed might help the issue.

 

[G18241]

In Sheffield we have recently been changed to:

Small blue bin for tins / glass / plastic...thought you cant put bottle tops in this :/
Blue box for paper/card
Green bin for garden waste
Black bin for "other"

We also have a small box on our window sill that gets filled with food scraps and then dumped in the compost bin outside, having the amount of veg eating animals i have makes sense to compost all the scraps

 

[bloodiedathame]

I actually work for Sita.

Our company direction is to move as much as possible away from landfill. Recycling is becoming more and more important. The cost of landfill tax is getting so high that it is no longer financially viable to dump everything in a hole in the ground.

Cheaper to send it abroad and dump it on someone elses doorstep? I'm only guessing but please correct me if I'm wrong as I'm interested to know what the process actually is. I wouldn't be happy if my 'recycling' was dumped in India for example, when actually it should be taken to a facility to re-use the material.

 

[A[L]C]

I work in IT so am not fully aware of the business side of things, but afaik we do not 'dump' anything abroad. We do send plastics and cardboard to china, but they pay for these so there is obviously a demand for it.