h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well who said any one person can chage the whole world anyway? We can all work to change our wee bit of it surely. Like if we all recycle then that's a small bit from each of us that does a much bigger thing. Of if food manufacturers make foods healthier it helps us eat healthier.

Retailers should be made to take back their own packaging and the old goods that are replace from their sales.
Similarly, Manufacturers should receive back obsolete items in their line of business from their retailers.
This way there will be a great incentive to manufacture items that last longer, be less packaged and more environmentally friendly. Perhaps even more recyclable.

Yeah. Like I saw Currys were advertising that if you buy a new fridge or whatever from them, they'd take away your old one and recycle it. More places should do that.

Think it should be made as easy as possible to recycle/reuse things and things should be made to last longer like they used to make them. Companies like Tesco etc should make things with less packaging and the packaging should be recycled.

Thinbk it's more our council, but with our recycling bin, they'kll take certain plastics and paper, but not others. We can put in a magazine with staples, but not one with glue or office type paper. We can put in a pizza box (without the pizza of course) but not Christmas cards or orange juice cartons. So much is recyclable, but our councils seem to be very picky.

Courteousoptimist wrote:-

" Retailers should be made to take back their own packaging and the old goods that are replace from their sales.... "

Those of us 'of a certain age' [hem!] will remember being encouraged to recycle GLASS when it was scarce in the post WWII years by being offered "money on the bottle" [1d, 2d, 6d I can remember - a few years ago you could get 10p from a bloke with a van who used to deliver in parts of Liverpool but I don't know if this still happens!]

In Scandinavia there is a well-established scheme similar to the above which PREVENTS c. 98% of all DRY CELL BATTERIES sold finishing up in LANDFILL they way they do in the UK.

I tried to float this idea several years ago, but nobody was interested ......... so we continue to BURY over 250,000 METRIC TONNES of batteries every year .... containing lead, cadmium, nickel, mercury and other "goodies" which in 15-29 years from now will rot into the subsoil, and contaminate the water supply YOUR children will have to drink ........

Good point. I know in quite a few countries in mainland Europe, you get a Euro or so for every glass bottle you take back to the shop. Definately gives an incentive not to just throw them in with the rest of the rubbish.

A newbie I'm afraid but could I ask you to look at My Conversation about Retailers & Recycling. You probably know how to find my site easier than I do but if you want me to direct you pease explain how!

Sorry, but I didn't realise my earlier summary from "My Conversation" had been picked up and replied to. Damn newbies!
In France where I have a house, recycling is more organised and much easier. I agree with the earlier point that our councils are FAR TOO PICKIE. Is it to make more money or to make their lives easier? It doesn't seem to bring the council tax down.
The French have local community recycling wheelie bins and yellow bags for recyclable material. In the Yellow bag goes ALL plastics, cans, and foil. Glass is put in the Community bottle bank and papers similarly go in the local community paper bank. Very little sorting is done by us. Bulky items, compost, wood, white goods have to go to the tip - which is very well maintained. I dont know if it's profitable but it's far better than our system.
Our Councils in Cornwall don't collect larger cardboard boxes - flattened or otherwise - and this goes to land fill. I thought cardboard boxes were good material to recycle. In business we have to pay for our waste cardboard to be taken away!! Cheek!!

A little insight into our local council rubbish collection...

Three wheelie bins which are colour coded; red one takes non-recyclable rubbish and is considerably smaller than the other two, it is collected every two weeks, yellow bin is for recyclables and is collected on alternate weekly dates from the red one, virtually all plastics, all paper and cardboard, glass, tins, polystyrene, plastic packaging go into this one the list is nearly endless.
The third bin is for all organic material; garden clippings etc, all your kitchen waste wrapped up in newspaper please. Anything that can be composted is placed in this and it is collected weekly.

The local council tip or rubbish centre is now a money making enterprise.
The organic material is shredded and is fed to worms...billions of the little buggers eagerly chomp away at this meal of human waste and convert it into worm castings which is then collected and left in huge piles which break it down a little bit more and then it is sold to farmers across our state(New South Wales)as a soil conditioner. It's a brilliantly simple concept used on a industrial scale.

The glass and newspaper and cardboard are sorted and squashed into big bales and then on sold to paper recycling companies as is the glass and plastic.
All metals are collected even down to the little silvery strips that you tear to open a chewing gum pack or the insides of a cigarette pack.
De-gassed fridges, air conditioners, washing machines, old bikes, cars, fencing any metal material is sold to metal foundries.
All engine oil, cooking oil etc is sold to bio fuel manufacturers, old tyres are recycled and are now used in a stabilisation process involved in road construction a brilliantly simple concept that is now being used all over the country.

All timber is recycled either as usable lumber or it is wood-chipped.
All old concrete such as concrete footpaths and old house slabs or driveways etc are crushed and reused in road construction.

The impact on our local landfill has been spectacular since these measures were introduced well over a decade ago. It has extended the life of this landfill site and by it's strict enforcement of recycling measures it has educated the general public in the basic principles of recycling and makes them aware that they really can help our world by lessening the impact our first world lifestyle has on the planet.

It is second nature for my children to separate all the things that used to go straight in the bin and off to the tip where an 'out of sight, out of mind' mentality used to reign supreme.

Link recycling to money and companies begin to prick their ears up and the savvy ones are now making healthy profits from this endless resource.

If your councils in the UK and other countries are not doing this then the question has to be...Why not?

1. Narrow minded, lack of business acumen, cant see the broader picture - all conspire. Our local councils are elected from, naturally, people who want the local political life. They are not therefore usually the cleverest or most industrious else they wouldn't have the time for all the meetings. The paid local officials often dominate what can and can't happen as well and the "nimby's" have a disproportionate voice in our society holding up many worthy projects e.g. wind farms.
2. Perhaps its back to a monetary insentive as you suggest.
3. But again the staunch endemic conservatism of the British means that there is little risk taking or true entrepreneurial spirit out there.
4. The combination of 1. and 3. gives us a recycling rate of about 25% I believe. Appaulling! 2. Is probably the only hope of salvation.
Couldn't you send your Australian experince to our local councils in Cornwall and show them what could be achieved? That might help.
Does your system work in the remoter locations? Here in Cornwall we are very spread out with several clusters of 3 or 4 houses - making efficient use of wheelie bins and vehicles for collection difficult.

Keith's council's system sounds great. HGere, it depends so much on which council you're under too. I know people in different areas that have different things to put into their recycling bin. And some areas even have different bins.

Like my cousin's area has boxes for glass as well as the black for rubbish and blue for other recycling. My grandfather has a green bin for organic waste. I just have the standard blue and black, but even what you can put into the blue varies depending on where you are.

In most places glass and compost and cloth have to be taken specifically to a collection point. It's crazy and confusing and insane.

"Does your system work in the remoter locations? Here in Cornwall we are very spread out with several clusters of 3 or 4 houses - making efficient use of wheelie bins and vehicles for collection difficult."


Well I live in a regional city with a population of about 45.000 and the collection here is obviously fairly straight forward but having said that our outlying villages all have a weekly garbage collection service.
This service assumes that your green waste will be used on the farm or left to rot in any number of ways but all these small villages and individual farms and small acreage places all get a a recycling bin service and a straight rubbish bin pick up.

Such is the zeal of the council that the garbage truck drivers are given the job of assessing whether people are doing the right thing by putting the correct 'stuff' in the correct bin. If not then he hops out of the truck and places a warning sticker, reminding the householder to do the right thing. If they repeat offend, then their service is stopped and they have to take the matter up with someone at the council offices.

I'm surprised that private enterprise has not got on this bandwagon in the UK as here they are making huge money out of it. Enormous sums measuring in the tens of millions if not hundreds.
State of the art separators work around the clock and the produce or raw material is either value added in the form of new products or on sold to the voracious manufacturers in Chindia (China/India)

The big worm farm I mentioned in my previous post was a joint effort between the council and private enterprise. The council supplied the land and part of the infrastructure and the company did the rest.

It can be done, our councils are no different to yours; they are full of strutting peacocks and various individuals or groups with self-interest as their reason for being there but pressure bought to bear by the next tier of government here and lobbying by various Green groups has seen a change of thinking take place across the country. It's not perfect but it is a start and as Australians are rated as nearly the largest producers of domestic rubbish per capita we had too.

It seems a bit nuts to only collect organic or household waste every fortnight. Surely it'll totally stink by then if the weather's in any way warm? I know people who've complained here about this as they've had small kids with dirty nappies that don't smell good at the best of times. I know you don't keep the wheelie bin in the house, but it must cause a right pong in the yard/garden.

Sorry 'Not Panicing yet', I must of confused the pick-up dates: Every Monday the organic waste bin is picked up as well as one of the other bins which are rotated fortnightly, if that makes sense..

Also in this household we place the daily newspaper(A broadsheet. Do you still have one in the UK?) on the kitchen bench and all the scraps and crumbs etc are wrapped up and placed in the bin, which does negate a lot of the odour associated with the waste.

Sorry. Must've read you wrong. Though here we don't have organic bins, so all our food waste either goes in with our ordinary rubbish or we have to compost it ourselves, which the vast majority wouldn't do - far too messy. Sounds like you've a much better system. And newspapers really help?

The newspaper does help and keeps the odours down and here in Australia of course it stops the flies breeding in your garbage bin. Maggotts are a very quick by product of anything left to rot here be it in a bin or in the open.
What a truly slack attitude by your local council[s] not to do something with the enormous amounts of organic waste that 60 odd million UK residents must produce on a weekly basis. The connection has to be made between 'Green principles' and 'Money' ie; Business. Once you have business realising there is profits to be made then things really seem to happen quickly.
Our council realised that it's own Garbage Tip or Refuse Waste Facility if you prefer had/has a finite life and that a new landfill sight was going to be extremely difficult to get past green groups and legislators in this modern Nimby age we live in.
The undertakings they have taken on board have given this facility a much, much longer life and also in the long term will be of benefit to local ratepayers in less costs associated with garbage collection and disposal.

"Not panicing yet" - cool personal space. As a newbie I've only managed words and a smiley or two!
The newspaper idea is good for veg waste but of course meat products should not be included. They attract rats as well as flies (even in Cornwall UK), smell awful and have to be disposed of elsewhere.
I would still harp on about returning artefacts to the retailers when buying new. We sort of do that already when we part exchange a car. But its a real fag to take the TV or PC to the tip knowing it contains several useful commodities to be recovered - even if by India or China.
When will business wake up in this country if it is as profitable as it appears in Australia? I expect our Health and Safety Regs., the EEC and our penal taxation system are the big disinsentive here.

You must have smart rats up there in Blighty, down here the blighters haven't worked out yet how to pull up the lid of a wheelie bin

Whoops! I meant the rats came round and under the compost bin! Obviously worse if it contained meat products.
In the high street of small towns, for modest commercial undertakings, often only plastic bags are permitted in the street - e.g.my office - the night before the truck comes round. We have to pay for the plastic bags as well depite high local business taxes. No bins at all here for commercial small offices in a town of 13,000. How primitive is that?
Just as irritating is the fact that we have to pay for cardboard to be recycled! If you dont pay it goes to the local tip on the truck collecting the ordinary garbage. Same system for local domestic collections. Bulk cardboard from the large new fridge is taken and dumped. Small items of cardboard (2' x 2')cereal packets,etc. are collected for recycling. I have written abrasive letters to the recyclers who are just not interested.
I give up!

Pay to recycle cardboard!?!? What do your rates pay for then.

Think businesses buying recycling/organic waste might have to happen here. It's so annoying and confusing. the amount of organic and recyclable stuff that goes into our black non-recycling bin is unbelievable. The councils have so many rules and each council is different.

It's a similar scenario as here though, this stupid system that allows individual councils to just go their merry way and make up their own rules and regulations as they go along.
The idea that you can be selective with your cardboard is just plain silly.
I'm not sure on this but I think that when the contractor who does the baling up (do you know the big bundles I'm talking about?)of collected paper and cardboard here, they just compress everything into these bundles; no separation of newspaper and cardboard at all.

If your interested, here's a link to a page at our council's web site and it explains all the strategies that it is doing with waste. Of particular interest is the Worm farm, I didn't realise it but it's the biggest facility in the Southern Hemisphere.
I think you'll find it interesting the apparent enthusiasm shown here...

http://www.lismore.nsw.gov.au/cmst/lcc002/view_doc.asp?id=4703&cat=103