Italian Idyll?
Does Lord Norton go on holiday at all…or perhaps he takes the blog with him? He reminds us all that Select Committee reports keep getting churned out through recess. Today the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology Report on Waste Reduction was published (in two volumes: this is the second volume).
Sounds dull but it isn’t and if you’ve got stuck into domestic recycling it all makes rather depressing reading since it emerges that only a tiny proportion of the total waste comes from domestic rather than business sources and the Government isn’t doing as much as it might to provide the right incentives to business to reduce waste via for example tax incentives.
When I’m sorting out a different set of things to recycle in Norfolk from London (where the City of London does a splendid job of providing really good waste disposal and recycling facilities), remembering whether envelopes can go in recycling (no in Norfolk, yes in London), plastic bags (yes in Norfolk, no in London), glass bottles (yes in London, no and even have to be deposited by glass colour somewhere else in Norfolk) it all does tend to drive one potty.
And reading this report didn’t encourage me one bit, we domestic recycling folk need to see business really making a difference. But I’m now totally addicted to getting every scrap of waste paper in the right box, every tiny bit of foil and my non-recyclable stuff is down to almost nothing, especially in Norfolk where we have a huge compost heap. But I know in my heart its not really making much of a difference to the nation’s landfill problem, just makes me feel smug.
On arriving back in London I found 2 piles of parliamentary and other mail 16 inches high each waiting to be opened. Five huge plastic bags for recycling is the result, I hope someone does something useful with it….
We are keen recyclers too. The problem for lots of households though is just where do you put the wheelie recycle bins? We are fortunate to have the space to hide them away.
What is really annoying is having a paper bin with a separate container for combined bottle and tins that is too small for its monthly collection. The overflow gets bagged.
The content of the refuse bin is invariably filled with food packaging because our food waste, what little there is of it, is ground before exit into the drainage system. Some borough councils subsidise the purchase of sink grinders but most of them do not including our own.
One downside to their use is blockages and they always seem to occur at the worst of times. There is a knack to installing them and ensuring the pipe work does not impede or snag the outflow. Experience gained over very many years I must say.
I think it is just appalling that most bins fill with food waste. It attracts vermin especially if the bin has overflowed and the surplus has been black bagged.
The plastics bin, this is the one that fills the fastest, is emptied manually by taking it to a supermarket collection facility. This is a huge con as very little plastic is actually recycled; the bulk I believe goes off in sea containers to China.
Because of this all our plastic food packaging is returned to its point of origin, the supermarket something that seems befitting.
It should not be the function of local authorities to collect and dispose of waste, not since the EU introduced heavy fines on those authorities which do not manage to divert enough from landfill. They cannot control the manufacture of waste in their areas, so the responsibility on getting rid of it should be put firmly where it belongs – on manufacturers and retailers. If they had to bear the cost the amount of waste would reduce dramatically. The cost would be deleted from the council tax and put on the initial cost of the goods in the shops. Those who buy more waste would rightly pay more than those who buy less.
Ideally there should be a law which says “as from 1st January, 2013, if your product and/or its packaging cannot be eaten, reused, recycled or composted, you cannot sell it.” That would concentrate the mind !
Aurading – you took the thought right out of my mind!
I am not in favour of new laws usually but your suggestion is something I would wholeheartedly endorse. Suppliers and retailers would soon have everything recyclable if they were not allowed to sell anything else.
I am usually even less in favour of new tax, or indeed any form of tax, but I also think that retailers should be taxed, and heavily, on the number of carrier bags they use. That would soon stamp out the nonsense that we see every day of someone buying a sandwich or another single item and it being put in a carrier bag. And the staff in a particular branch of one of the leading supermarkets need to be trained that when a customer says they do not want a bag that is good and not something that should elicit a dirty look!
Howridiculous.
Oh I do so agree with you all. And you’ll to be pleased to know that the Select Committee Report was all in favour of putting the onus on businesses who create the waste as the most effective way of reducing the colume.
Senex, I can see we have identical experiences of waste disposal units, I could write a book about them. I’ve given up trying to get the one in my London flat to work after several embarrassing floods on the poor folk below. In Norfolk we grind what we can and use the composter. But I could go on at length about the plastic and cardboard. I seem to be forever carrying different materials to different locations around the places I live since there isn’t enough space in either kitchen for multiple collection boxes. I did actually write to the City of London about its plastic recycling and they gave me a rather well-considered three page answer that more or less convinced me it was worth it! But like you I remain somewhat sceptical.
Baroness: High-speed non-induction motor types are best in my experience.
http://www.wastedisposerwarehouse.co.uk/products,pid_5.html
Anaheim in the USA manufactures such units. You might consider the Commander 7000. They have useful accessories too, how about a ‘Mr Scrappy Disposer Brush’, very useful.
Can anybody tell me just where one takes plastic with the triangle mark containing the nature of the thermoplastic? All the manufacturers now classify and mark their plastic in this way but personally when I take such plastic to the council recycle depot there are no containers to put it in. So it goes into the general waste container for landfill.
This makes nonsense of everything! The manufacturers are doing their bit but the council, supermarkets and recycle facilitators are not. This cannot be allowed to continue?