Vocal Voices

A new report says we should put a refundable deposit on plastic bottles.

Yep. Make it 50p or 75p. No, make it £1 and get them recycled and not sent to landfill. Do the same for ping-cuisine meal trays, shampoo bottles, wash-up liquid.....

We recycle nearly everything. We have a brown bin for plastic, glass and cans. Plastic bags are saved in a big plastic bag and taken to one of the supermarkets for recycling. Large blue bin for paper and cardboard. Anything we can't recycle goes in a black bin. We only put it out once a month as it never gets above half full.
Large green bin for garden and food waste. Waiting for council to start charging for this green bin to be emptied.

I would have thought most households have the facility to, and know how to, recycle plastic bottles. Probably more problematical are plastic drinks bottles which are bought and drunk on the hoof, and then discarded in general rubbish bins. Perhaps more attention needs to be given to setting up recycling bins in public places?

This really is a serious problem, which is the result a growing population and an affluent society,
but something certainly needs to be done about it. Other things that ought to be dealt with, such
as global warming, air pollution and obesity are, without doubt, also due to the same causations.
Personally I cannot suggest an acceptable remedy, but all I can say is God help future generations .
Without a doubt, there will be serious and irreversible outcomes.

But, but, but.............we recycle all these kind of things in our very large blue bin. What's the point in having to pay a deposit and then trail to some machine to shove the bottle or whatever in there and reclaim our deposit when the bin is sitting here doing nothing now?

I did read somewhere that councils only have to collect the rubbish separately. After that they can dispose of it how they wish. I don't know if it's true though.

My rather OTT post was deliberate just to make a point.

Yes, we nearly all now have recycle bins at home and many of us use them to the max, even though the rules in some areas are a bit complicated, to say the least.

The fact remains, though, that we only recycle about 50% of these (mainly) drinks containers. Some 35,000,000 of them 'go missing' every day between the point-of-sale and recycling centres. Most of them end up in landfill, which is madness in itself, but a large proportion end up dumped in parks, rivers, washed up on beaches, tossed into hedgerows ...

The largest numbers are those from portable drinks, the ones in cans and 500ml bottles. The Scandinavians and Germans, among others, charge deposits on these and their recycling rates are above 90%. If they can do it there is no reason we should not at least try.

cromwell wrote:I did read somewhere that councils only have to collect the rubbish separately. After that they can dispose of it how they wish. I don't know if it's true though.

Yes, true, certainly in Birmingham. At the council recycling centre, you sorted your rubbish into one of about a dozen separate skips. The vast majority then got carted off to the industrial incinerator in Saltley and .. incinerated! More than once I turned up with something like cardboard, only to find the cardboard skip overflowing or missing. "Just dump it in household," was the invariable response.

Mrs O once turned up at the centre with a huge box of Chinese fireworks she'd accidently bought instead of Roman Candles, (you know, the type you shouldn't let off in your back garden unless it's half a mile long). The car had been driven down to the tip at 10 mph; the box was gingerly lifted out and carried to the control hut at arms' length.

"Can I give you these to dispose of," she said.
"Oh, just dump 'em in household. They'll go off with a bigger and better bang!"

Ossie is right, recycling is mostly a giant con

Recycling is big money. In Germany and Sweden and many other EU countries, deposits are mandatory and glass bottles (especially) are reused, not recycled until they are beyond effective reuse.

Look at the UK. Maniacally forcing any regulation they can on the people to reduce CO2 emissions, yet emitting 100 million more tonnes of CO2, per year, on recycling glass, than if they had just chucked it in the landfill and made new glass.

Con, CON, _CON_

Handled correctly recycling can be effective and even save money. However British recycling is handled by local councils. Need I say another word?