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I don't recycle

Started by Twed, September 21, 2018, 03:33:41 AM

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Twed

I don't trust that the infrastructure is efficient enough to provide a real environmental savings
I think that personal recycling is designed to shift focus away from the real environmental damage done by big corporate operations

Thank you for reading my thread

Twed

If I'm wrong please let me know. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea that rejecting the expectation to do personal recycling fights against the myth that it's the responsibility of individuals and not corporations. If it's worth me driving my plastic shit ten miles away to get recycled, I'll do it.

bgmnts

Surely its better than not recycling at all?

PlanktonSideburns

Fake it to make it: we didn't go straight from no aeroplane to 747, we needed those stupid comedy wooden black and white video planes made of bike parts and matchsticks smashing in to ditches for a couple of years. Play the long game. You'd be the chuckling camera man, convinced the only thing that was going to come out of this was fiver from jeremy beadle

Zetetic

I don't know. I recognise anti-littering campaigns are tied up with manufacturers shrugging off responsibility to reduce the impact of their packaging and the like, but I don't drop rubbish in the street.

Need to knock this "drive ten miles" stuff on the head. What a country! etc.

Sebastian Cobb

I've had to stop because the big green mixed recycling biffa bin in the street has disappeared.

The infrastructure one is how it becomes beneficial though. If you look at how businesses recycle they chuck all mixed recyclables together (often even the ones that make you sort them enter into the same bin at some point). I know a bloke who was working on a state of the art recycling facility that could sort your mixed recycling, it was huge, the Ford transits in the corner of the photos looked like matchbox cars. It was unable to accept plastic bags though, so if your dickhead neighbor dropped one in your bin they wouldn't take it. Seems a bit of a waste.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

The plastic straw ban campaign seems to have had cut through at corporate level.

They are extremely sensitive of their image projected on social media so I recommend using that to target them. I have read black plastic can't be processed by many recycling companies as the scanner used to sort it can't pick it up. Black is just used because it makes the garbage cantine slop ready meals look nicer.

Moreover, I don't understand why one thing has to come in substitution of the other. I wouldn't protest about more infrequent bin collections by littering.  Carry on recycling and chip in to campaigns designed to stir corporate responsibility.

Cuellar

I have become jaded since I started actually looking at plastic packaging to see if it can be recycled rather than just blithely assuming it can.

Barely anything can be recycled, it turns out. Everything should come in paper bags.

biggytitbo

How much of local council waste that we have to separate into literally 10 million bins actually gets recycled and how much get shipped to landfill in China? I have heard that the former category is surprisingly small.

Buelligan

Yeah, I can't be arsed to do stuff that's boring and I've heard, luckily enough, that there are people who say all the boring stuff is pointless and for sheeple anyway.  I just take all my plastic and feed it to the dolphins, that's real rebellion and I've heard they love it anyway.  Peace.

Zetetic

Quote from: biggytitbo on September 21, 2018, 09:37:02 AM
How much of local council waste that we have to separate into literally 10 million bins actually gets recycled and how much get shipped to landfill in China? I have heard that the former category is surprisingly small.
About 50% is recycled, under the definition given by the Waste Framework Directive, which is broad but not that broad. (Bit less in Scot and Eng and a bit more in Wales.)

We have, of course, opposed attempts to set more strenuous pan-European targets.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on September 21, 2018, 08:37:15 AM
The plastic straw ban campaign seems to have had cut through at corporate level.

They are extremely sensitive of their image projected on social media so I recommend using that to target them. I have read black plastic can't be processed by many recycling companies as the scanner used to sort it can't pick it up. Black is just used because it makes the garbage cantine slop ready meals look nicer.

Moreover, I don't understand why one thing has to come in substitution of the other. I wouldn't protest about more infrequent bin collections by littering.  Carry on recycling and chip in to campaigns designed to stir corporate responsibility.

The plastic straw ban is far more about image than it is about plastic in the sea. More attention should be turned to the fishing industry.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastics-environment/

I do wonder why able bodied adults even need straws most of the time.

Buelligan

You should see what we, minimum-wage zero hours gig-economy workers, do to the rims of your glasses.  :)

holyzombiejesus

Are we still supposed to rip the clear windows out of envelopes? I get a bit obsessed with the recycling and sometimes rummage through bins and get frustrated because my wife's dropped price tags and receipts in there. We were down to maybe one bin liner full of non recyclable a fortnight, and that was mostly plastic wrapping. Since we've had the baby, that's at least doubled (mostly nappies) and I really don't like it.

canadagoose

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on September 21, 2018, 08:33:29 AM
I've had to stop because the big green mixed recycling biffa bin in the street has disappeared.
Did you used to say "ave summa that, ya biffa" as you flung your recycling into it?

I recycle some things, mostly plastic bottles, cans, tins, glass and paper. Some plastic food containers I just can't be bothered to rinse out, and anyway, my recycling box doesn't have enough space for everything. It's usually pretty full after 2 weeks.

yesitsme

I do recycle but know it's 100pc futile when the US and North Korea are blasting A-bombs in to the atmosphere on the hour every hour.  It's pointless busywork to a) make you feel like you're doing something and b) like it's your fault all the Ozone has got out and we can't make fizzy drinks anymore.

That said I've always been in favour of not creating waste in the first place.  Why is there a 'discussion' about what to do with all these plastic bottles?  We shouldn't be using them in the first place?

It used to do my nut in watching people buy a sandwich at lunch, put that lunch in a carrier bag, walk 50 yards to their desk, take that sandwich out then THROW THE BAG AWAY!  Don't moan to me about the price of petrol when you are wasting the raw materials like that.

Food waste too is a disgrace.  The argument for GMO foods is that 'we could feed the third world' - we already could if we wanted to, we just don't want to.

I get scunnered when, on the vary rare occasions I'm dragged in to an 'all you can eat' buffet.  You see people piling plates as high as the sky only to take two bites of pakora then throw the rest away.

While there are people going hungry around the corner from you - let alone in Bangladesh I'd make that a hanging offence.

One final one.  Marks and Spencers Jaffa Cakes.  Cellophane, cardboard, more cellophane, plastic.  For 12 fucking jaffas.  As nice as they are Rudolph Hess had less security.

Planet's fucked anyway.

Twed

Quote from: Zetetic on September 21, 2018, 07:59:37 AM
I don't know. I recognise anti-littering campaigns are tied up with manufacturers shrugging off responsibility to reduce the impact of their packaging and the like, but I don't drop rubbish in the street.
Hm, littering annoys me very much. And I certainly would recycle if it didn't involve a drive out of the way to a commercial facility that reputedly doesn't do anything special to the materials. I believe I can do better myself. For example, when I have a plastic straw it goes through my shredder along with junk mail - I trust it not to go up a turtle's nose far more than if I gave it to a facility.

Quote from: yesitsme on September 21, 2018, 11:36:49 AM
That said I've always been in favour of not creating waste in the first place.  Why is there a 'discussion' about what to do with all these plastic bottles?  We shouldn't be using them in the first place?
I think that's exactly it. Special bins being designed to dispose of things that shouldn't have been manufactured that way are a problem. "Your bananas now come individually-wrapped, so please be a good citizen and put the wrapping in th" NO. I won't buy that banana.

Dex Sawash

Quote from: Twed on September 21, 2018, 11:57:44 AM
. "Your bananas now come individually-wrapped, so please be a good citizen and put the wrapping in th" NO. I won't buy that banana.

Seems unworkable


mrpupkin

Come to think of it why do straws exist? When did you last use a straw, and why? Even for children, once they've learned how to put a fork in their mouth surely they can navigate putting their lips on a rim? In places like McDonalds most people are eating inside so why do their cups even need lids, which then have to be circumvented by a straw? If they must make lids for people taking away and drinking on the go because they are a high-flyer and a go-getter, why not make them like the coffee ones where you have a little sipping hole? Do people already think this or have I just blown Big Straw wide open?

Dex Sawash

Straws were paper when I was a child, those sucked.

Konki

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on September 21, 2018, 09:54:04 AM
Are we still supposed to rip the clear windows out of envelopes? I get a bit obsessed with the recycling and sometimes rummage through bins and get frustrated because my wife's dropped price tags and receipts in there. We were down to maybe one bin liner full of non recyclable a fortnight, and that was mostly plastic wrapping. Since we've had the baby, that's at least doubled (mostly nappies) and I really don't like it.

Simple solution: put the nappies down the toilet like a normal person.

Quote from: mrpupkin on September 21, 2018, 12:21:01 PM
Come to think of it why do straws exist? When did you last use a straw, and why? Even for children, once they've learned how to put a fork in their mouth surely they can navigate putting their lips on a rim? In places like McDonalds most people are eating inside so why do their cups even need lids, which then have to be circumvented by a straw? If they must make lids for people taking away and drinking on the go because they are a high-flyer and a go-getter, why not make them like the coffee ones where you have a little sipping hole? Do people already think this or have I just blown Big Straw wide open?

Thick shakes. Can't drink those without a straw.

And Pimms so you don't get a gob full of fruit.

yesitsme

Tell you what I'd ban.  Christmas Crackers.

The plastic shit that's inside them has spent millions of years being turned from Barney the Dinosaur in to oil, mined, refined, turned in to a plastic spider - you pull the cracker *BANG* the fucker sees the light of day for 8 seconds and is then thrown in the bin.

If Martians came down they'd be well within their rights to wipe us out on the spot based on that.

Try telling ET 'circle of life mate, innit?'

Watch his face turn to anger and his eyes to laser beams.

Z

Quote from: Twed on September 21, 2018, 03:33:41 AM
I don't trust that the infrastructure is efficient enough to provide a real environmental savings
I think that personal recycling is designed to shift focus away from the real environmental damage done by big corporate operations

Thank you for reading my thread
Well, do you try to do something else instead?  The recycling might be bollocks but do you make up for it by reusing things more?

ajsmith2

Quote from: mrpupkin on September 21, 2018, 12:21:01 PM
Come to think of it why do straws exist? When did you last use a straw, and why? Even for children, once they've learned how to put a fork in their mouth surely they can navigate putting their lips on a rim? In places like McDonalds most people are eating inside so why do their cups even need lids, which then have to be circumvented by a straw? If they must make lids for people taking away and drinking on the go because they are a high-flyer and a go-getter, why not make them like the coffee ones where you have a little sipping hole? Do people already think this or have I just blown Big Straw wide open?

2 far from conclusive but worth considering reasons for adults to use straws:

1) so people wearing lippy don't smear it unattractively all over the rim of the glass

2) with sugary drinks. the liquid is funnelled directly into the centre of the mouth rather than washing all over the teeth first, meaning less opportunity for decay to start

Agree neither of these is a great reason and would still be better to get rid of them but reasons they still be.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Zetetic on September 21, 2018, 09:45:41 AM
About 50% is recycled, under the definition given by the Waste Framework Directive, which is broad but not that broad. (Bit less in Scot and Eng and a bit more in Wales.)

We have, of course, opposed attempts to set more strenuous pan-European targets.


Do you have data for pan recycling in Europe? I didn't know it was possible.

Twed

Quote from: Z on September 21, 2018, 01:01:30 PM
Well, do you try to do something else instead?  The recycling might be bollocks but do you make up for it by reusing things more?
I said just above that I don't buy over-packaged things and I do things like shred my straws.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Z on September 21, 2018, 01:01:30 PM
Well, do you try to do something else instead?  The recycling might be bollocks but do you make up for it by reusing things more?

Rather than sending my jars to the recycling plant I tend to use them for storing sundries. Big litre jars of sauerkraut are good for rice and couscous.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Twed on September 21, 2018, 01:36:13 PM
I said just above that I don't buy over-packaged things and I do things like shred my straws.

How does shredding straws help the environment?

Twed

Helps increase the shredded straw count