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Post by lavender on Aug 21, 2006 9:03:07 GMT
How easy is it for you to recycle where you live?
Where I am, there is a recycling area about two roads from me by the Park and then another big recycling area within Tesco Carpark which is just out of town (the next one to me) and a drive away. I know the council are planning those wheeley bin things, and we will have two, one for recycling and one for household waste, which will be collected on alternate weeks.
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Post by maisiepaisie on Aug 21, 2006 9:26:04 GMT
There are 2 local sites, one at Tesco and one near the pet shop where I buy supplies. Both do newspaper and glass but Tesco doesn't do plastic bottles which is annoying as I only go to the petshop once a fortnight.
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Post by paul on Aug 21, 2006 9:36:34 GMT
we have fortnightly pick ups,, + local recycling bins etc,
i dont have much that needs recycling,
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Post by lavender on Aug 21, 2006 9:48:23 GMT
We have no where for plastics at all either - I leave mine in a bag next to the recycling bins - Im hoping that they will take them to the main depot in Medway anyway.
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Post by fezzarooooo on Aug 21, 2006 10:25:53 GMT
We got the wheelie bins last summer for plastic, glass, paper & tin which are soooo handy. Previously we'd been living in a tiny second floor flat and had to store it all then cart it off to the depo 5mls away. The garden bin is brilliant for the grass cuttings (we've got two generous sized lawns) but we can't put household waste into it yet, they're hoping to sort it soon. They pretend it's all for the environment but it's really cos they got a spanking great fine last year for not meeting their quota.
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Post by paul on Aug 21, 2006 11:42:56 GMT
i also give scrap stores stuff, chairty shops etc.
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Post by Juice on Aug 21, 2006 18:22:19 GMT
I take my recycling to any number of drop off sites that are around me. The thing that irks me is that the only plastics they take are #1 and #2, so I hate it when I look at something and it says #5 or something.
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Post by Limey on Aug 21, 2006 18:39:40 GMT
Yes yes and double yes. I have NEVER seen a recycling place take anything other than 1 or 2. And I've found that when I buy organic, good stuff, they usually come in 5 or 7 containers. Is it because these containers have been made from recycled pieces parts? Will have to look into that.
I've got a trash dumpster only at my apartment complex, so I take my recycling to one of the various 24 hour centers around the city. It's nice because they are strictly for recycling so they are not gag-inducing like regular dumps.
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Post by paul on Aug 22, 2006 14:04:22 GMT
what are 1, 2, 5,7, limey, juice
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Post by Juice on Aug 22, 2006 14:09:56 GMT
what are 1, 2, 5,7, limey, juice The number indicates what kind of plastic it is. The number is usually found somewhere on the container, within the recycling symbol. There are numbers 1-7 I believe, and only plastics 1 & 2 are recyclable in my city. If you care, here's some more reading: Let’s start with #1 PET which stands for Polyethylene terephthalate. Soda bottles as well as some beer and liquor bottles are made from PET along with a variety of other food bottles and trays. PET can be melted and drawn out into long fibers and recycled into carpets, fiberfill for jackets, and fabric for T-shirts and shopping bags which unfortunately cannot be recycled. Manufacturers want recycled PET and buy it. Coca Cola has finally started using a measly 3 percent recycled PET in their bottles. Be aware that local recyclers only accept narrow-neck PET bottles. I have surmised over the years that used PET food containers with sticky food scraps contaminate the recycling machines. Milk and water jugs are made from number #2 HDPE or high-density polyethylene. Clear HDPE could easily be made into new containers. The colored HDPE (liquid detergent, and shampoo bottles) is generally recycled in plastic lumber. Those tough Tyvek mailing envelopes and white contamination suits are also a form of HDPE and are impossible to recycle. Vinyl or polyvinyl chloride (# 3 V) could be recycled. It is used for clear food packaging and plumbing pipe. However, collecting it for recycling is cost-prohibitive because there are not enough items made from the material to warrant local factories to recycle it into new products. They are generally used once and tossed. Low-density polyethylene (# 4 LDPE) is very flexible and made into bags for bread, frozen food, and grocery. Some of these bags are recycled into new bags or plastic lumber such as Trex. This plastic is lightweight and trucking it back for recycling uses more energy than producing a virgin product. Unless there is a recycling factory close by, most LDPE ends up in the landfill. Consider using cloth shopping bags. My husband and I have used the same bags for over eleven years. Polypropylene (# 5 PP) is made into yogurt, margarine, and other food containers. Like number 3 V, there are not enough containers made from PP to justify collecting it and shipping it to a recycling factory. In places where big industries use PP, there is enough volume for it to be sold for recycling. Then there’s #6 PS - Polystyrene, the plastic that I would ban from the face of the earth. Solid PS is made into compact disc jackets, eating utensils, and take-out food containers. The expanded PS know as Styrofoam is used for packing materials, coffee cups, meat trays, and egg cartons. The cost of moving used Styrofoam is higher than making it from virgin oil. Jax Place reported, “Foam recycling is a scam to make you feel OK about buying it. Don’t buy it; PS is buried in landfills.” Styrofoam is always found in our local creeks and rivers where birds and fish think it is food clogging up their digestive tracks thus ending their lives. The last of the labeled plastics is #7 OTHER. I echo Mr. Place’s voice, “Don’t buy this stuff unless you want to keep it. It can’t be sold or recycled.” Catsup bottles have wavered between PET and OTHER over the last few years. Lids and imported containers are likely to be made from mixed resins known as OTHER.
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Post by lavender on Aug 22, 2006 14:12:43 GMT
I reckon thats why hardly anywhere here offers plastic recycling, people actually shove allsorts in the wrong containers, so they would have to employ lots of peeps just to sort all the plastics out from each other. what a shame.
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Post by Limey on Aug 22, 2006 15:38:48 GMT
We have separate dumpsters for the plastics, glass, cardboard, aluminum, paper. Makes it nice, but some people still manage to screw it up.
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Post by Tiggerwoos on Oct 2, 2006 8:45:14 GMT
I'm a bit annoyed as there was a programme on Discovery recently and it appears that our so called eco friendly councils are encouraging us to recycle (and there was doccumented fly on the wall evidence) that they are encouraging us to recycle as it is cheaper for them to ship the waste to places such as Thailand to landfill sites, which costs them pennies as opposed to over here.
Apparantly they are doing this as it costs them more money to recycle than do this, but it really pees me off as it appears that very little of the stuff we send off for recycling actually does get recycled.
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Post by Pob on Oct 2, 2006 9:09:55 GMT
I'm not really surprised.
I have heard that kerbside collections are often just stuck in with regular waste, due to lack of resources to sort it properly.
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Post by maisiepaisie on Oct 2, 2006 11:43:34 GMT
I have heard that kerbside collections are often just stuck in with regular waste, due to lack of resources to sort it properly. I've heard that too but I don't get it. Why ask us to sort it in the first place if this is the case
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Post by veganbikerboy on Oct 2, 2006 12:49:13 GMT
my experience is that waste recycling is still hugely inefficient (energy wise) and not cost effective at all. Which is why it has been slow to catch on.
For example alot of the paper we recycle gets shipped to germany for processing, is that effecient??.
Also, It is not possible to recycle brown or green glass but the still get us to sort it??
so there is a limited capacity as to what 'recycling' waste we can handle so the excess goes to landfill.
As we do more it will become more viable, but whilst raw materials are still so cheap it is difficult for recycled materials to compete.
I have worked on a couple 'reuse' type projects which are interesting, using a spent material for something new. The main one i have been involved in is the use of crushed glass (using the brown and green) in tarmac (road surfacing materials) this benefits two fold directly reducing the mining of raw materials and reusing a spent raw material.
Last year i also read about a study in Iceland where they were using spent computer casings to insulate roads and prevent them freezing ;D
i personanlly think reuse projects will be more viable in the short term.
Just for the record i have kerbside collections for green waste, glass, cans, paper.
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Post by maya on Oct 11, 2006 20:07:46 GMT
Very easy. Every Thusrday a truck comes by and picks up paper, plastic, and cans. They provide us with the buckets and we put them out in front of our house on Thursday for pick up.
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Post by Tiggerwoos on Nov 17, 2006 5:18:35 GMT
The reason it goes to landfill sites when we are supposedly recycling it is as it's cheap for the councils and government to dump it in places like China and Thailand. It costs them a hell of a lot to recycle.
I was reading a massive article on the AOL message boards the other day and there were council workers cropping up admitting this.
So the moral is, by recycling, we're doing more harm than good by actually having to ship our "recycling" abroad.
My suggestion is to look for more ways of actually reducing our household waste instead........ soap bars, shampoo bars instead of bottles, bicarb of soda, vinegar as cleaner, biodegradable cat litter.......... composting etc and try and stay away as much as possible from commercially packaged produce.
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Post by earthmother on Nov 17, 2006 9:42:03 GMT
I was shocked to hear that, I thought they genuinely recycled it all, should have known better. We have a blue bin supplied by the council for paper and carboard that gets emptied once a month, and we can recycle plastics, tins, foil and tetra paks etc by taking them to drop banks.
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Post by squirrel on Nov 24, 2006 12:55:48 GMT
I'm surprised you can recycle tetra paks (juice cartons) as our council claims no one in the UK can recycle them
All these recycling targets the councils have to meet - are these based on amount of recycling collected or amount actually recycled? :confused
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