Two weeks ago our recycling bin’s contents were rejected so yesterday we had a brim-full bin after a month. And it has all gone. Phew!
It did make me think that aside from Christmas, we could probably manage with a monthly collection, or more easily every three weeks. And our rubbish bin of non-recyclable stuff could easily be emptied monthly or quite possibly every two months.
Our household won’t be the same as every other one in our street, so our needs can’t be taken as remotely typical. But it made me wonder whether a more communal means of disposing of these things would work.
This has made me wonder why rubbish bin contents are not inspected and given a red tag of shame if they contain too much recyclable material that should have gone in the other, green, bin.
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My local authority has one of the very best recycling systems in the whole of Scotland, a massive investment in kerbside recycling. The kerbside collection started way back in 1989, so we’ve had it in one form or another for over thirty years. The last time they looked at it about half of the ‘waste’ that went in the real rubbish bin was actually recyclable material that should have gone in the other bins. In some areas it’s common for rubbish to be put in the garden waste bin and for some grass or cuttings put on top to disguise it. There was a national report that found across Scotland 54 million pounds was lost each year because existing recycling facilities were not used properly. A lot of public money that could have gone to the NHS or education truly wasted. When the very basic info re what should go in what bin is inadequate then it’s hardly surprising that the promotional/educational work needed to motivate people, especially kids, to support reduce, reuse, recycle in the first place wasn’t provided. Education was enormously short changed from the very beginning and it was an enormously expensive mistake. There needs to be a massive investment in it right now. Well done Mark, I suffer from the same social embarrassment when I’m late returning books to the library – will we ever be able to hold our heads high again?
Because the average rate payer, who already pays their council tax to cover trash being hauled away, is only just about willing to swallow being charged for sorting our own rubbish even though we pay tax to cover rubbish removal and recycling, and will draw the line at being charged yet again for that. It would easily lead to councillors being voted out and an increase in fly tipping that taking on the extra workload.
Recycling needs to be done at destination, not at source. And the private sector along with the need for profits firmly booted out of public services. It could even be a great employment booster if councils need to take on extra staff to do it.
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Unfortunately your approach to simply use a waste bin and expect staff to sort it out at the other end wouldn’t work.
The recycling industry can only convert recyclates into other products if it is supplied with CLEAN materials. It would simply be impossible to convert paper and cardboard into a product if it was contaminated with shards of smashed glass and covered in food and other materials such as cleaning fluids, oils, unused medication, paints, pesticides, weedkiller etc etc. All products must meet safety standards and any material contaminated in that way would simply be classed as waste. That is why councils have separate bins for recyclates and waste.
Ideally, binned household materials would be collected in separate containers. Even better, the containers would be sorted out by staff on the kerbside so that wrongly placed materials could be rejected or placed in the correct bins and the resident marking the mistake quickly identified and informed of their error.
There are bins with trays for separate materials but they rely of kerbside sorting by staff which is not the approach adopted by most councils.
Ideally there would be separate containers for:
Food waste and garden waste. This could be converted into compost or a fuel (by anaerobic digestion or other processes – instead of emitting methane from a landfill site);
Recyclates (which would provide the clean, easy to separate materials the recycling industry needs to operate profitably – plastic, cardboard, paper, metals);
Hazardous materials (glass, cleaning fluids, unused medication, paints, weed killer, pesticides etc) which require special treatment to render them safer before disposal; and
Other materials (because, unfortunately, this, and previous, governments have not supported the principle of zero waste where all products are recyclable or compostable and are easily repairable and easy to separate out into those components to allow re-use.)
All this would be accompanied by incentive schemes and educational approaches.
Our system here in Wales does do a great deal of sorting the recycling at the kerbside into compartmentalised lorries. We have 4 boxes for paper, plastic goes in with metal, glass in with cardboard (god knows why) and another for food waste. I separate my cardboard out and put it out separately because there’s no rain cover on that box and mixing it with glass seems like a terrible idea anyway.
I’m amazed that England are still persisting with this system of chucking it all in together. Hardly surprising though from the country that still hasn’t fully brought in restrictions on single use plastic carrier bags. I imagine the money spent on HS2 will make up for the dire lack of investment in controlling waste production and recycling though right?
The “source” isn’t the household but the manufacturers of packaging.
A significant proportion of the true cost of recycling should be put onto the manufacturers to discourage profligate use of packaging materials and to penalise companies for using materials that are difficult or impossible to recycle.
Obviously consumers have a large part to play but government has a part to play in regulating the producers and has so far let them get away extremely lightly.
Our waste is split four ways: garden waste is sent for compost; food waste goes to an anaerobic digester; recycling and ‘landfill’, which actually goes to an incinerator. I had a tour of the incinerator facility, it extracts metal which is further recycled, the final clinker is used in road building and the heat is converted to electricity. Seeing the end point was very educational and I agree with Les about the need to teach children to be conscious of where waste goes.
I had my first tag of shame this morning as it happens. I’m a strict recycler and clean and sort everything meticulously even down to removing paper labels from cans and bottles if I can to go in the separate container. So why did I get a tag? There was plastic in with the glass, which is very odd since there wasn’t when I put the bins out a few minutes before the lorry arrived to take them. I have two theories: Maybe one of them spilt the plastic from one bin into the other and it was easier to tag it than sort out their mess. Or maybe the glass section of the lorry was full due to lockdown drinking habits and this was easier than organising someone else to come and pick it up. The thing that really annoyed me though is that the huge tags they use are made of non-recyclable plastic.