Safe Speed Forums

We're supposedly told that we are all evil for driving our cars around destroying the environment, apparently every time a TVR owner reaches WOT 7 baby pandas die or something.

With that thought in mind, we are also told about how great recycling is and how we can save the planet simply by making the effort to take our empty bottles to the bottle bank and so on.

With that in mind, I just filled up a refuse bag with 6 months worth empty brown "I hate my job" beer bottles, another with 6 months worth of old Tesco bags, and a few other odds and sods. I then proceded to search the internet for my nearest recycling centre, which presumably would be provided by the council.

No such luck, it's actually a commercial organisation that provide the recycling facilities, specifically it's our out of town Tesco Extra supermarket.

This isn't a problem for me as I just loaded them into the Passat which according to Gordon Brown's new tax banding is just as gas guzzling and deadly to pandas as my Legacy despuite getting 3 times the MPG, went to Tesco and did the deed.

How the hell are you supposed to do that without a car? I doubt they'd let me take these bags on the bus (even if one of them hadn't developed a hole and started pissing beer everywhere) and there's no way I was walking that distance. I could barely lift the damn things.

For bonus points, why do they insist on making you post the bottles one by one, and what's the point of providing a car-only recycling service that shuts at 5 (even if you can just drive through the gaps in the barrier, that isn't really the point is it?)

They've started putting mixed glass bottle banks on street corners around parts of Glasgow. Pretty handy IMO. In the summer months I am usually car-less and find getting to the bottle bank impossible, particularly with the quantity of empties I have . I'm hoping there'll be a local bank installed soon as at the moment my nearest one is about a mile away, also at the supermarket.

In fact, now you've spurred me on so I'm going to contact the council.

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Less Kodak, more Kojak.
In times of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

My local council (Stockport) collect bottles, cans and paper from your doorstep every fortnight.

There are also large numbers of bottle banks dotted around - I have two within half a mile's walking distance.

The service seems to vary widely between local government areas.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

My council (Eastleigh) operates kerbside glass collection each 4 weeks. It seems to work OK but..

I am always leery of leaving a nice box of clubs/weapons/potential broken glass outside my house overnight (you have to have them out by 7am.)

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I can never figure out glass re-cycling. It takes as mich energy to recycle glass into new glass as it does to make new stuff. It also makes good land fill as it is totaly non-poluting.

And lets face it, the world will NEVER run out of the raw materials to make glass.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Bradford council supply recycling wheelybins, one for paper, one for glass and cans. They are emptied every month.

The glass one is usefull and usually over half full, the paper one has so many rules (no windowed envelopes, no staples) that I end up taking my paper to the local waste centre for recycling where they are not so fussy. The bin comes in handy for storing garden toys.

If we had one for plastics then I would barely need a regular bin. I would need a bigger garden to keep them all in though.

There's one paper one and one, I think, magazines one. They're shared across 16 properties and have similar rules.

We keep a bin by the door for the junk mail, but the result of that is incompatable with the recyling bin, so it ends up in the regular rubbish. Oh well. I really don't have time to be detaching the plastic windows from all the crap I get sent.

Agreed. Recycling glass and paper is a 'feel good' activity. Aluminium, however, is worth recycling as it is more energy expensive to extract it from bauxite than to recycle it.

After today, I think my back would like a word with you regarding that comment.

Seconded (or is that "thirded"?)

Our bin regime is that we have two full size wheelie bins + 2 large plastic boxes. On one week the regular bin gets emptied, on the alternate weeks the "other" bin (for garden waste) plus the two boxes, which are for paper and glass/cans.

Now it seems to me that far from "saving the planet", what we are actually doing is expounding large quantities of time, energy and manpower into recovering stuff that would arguably be better dumped as landfill. If we dump wood, metal and glass all we are really doing is putting it back where it came from in the first place. The stuff we really need to be pulling out and recycling is plastic, which of course the Council don't do as it doesn't make them any money, so instead they employ a politically correct policy which in fact simply ensures that the landfill contains a higher concentration of pollutants.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Again, that depends on the council. I already get paper, cans and plastics uplifted for recycling.

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Less Kodak, more Kojak.
In times of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Oh, it gets even better. Our local council recently implemented a recycling scheme whereby everyone now has two wheelie bins - the black one we always had, plus a new green one. The black one gets emptied one week, the green one the next week and so on.

But here's the rub. The green bin can only contain waste food, wrapped up in special "bio bags". Nothing else is allowed. If there's anything non-food in there (even a sweet wrapper), it doesn't get emptied.

The problem is that food makes up less than 5% of what we throw away. Most of the food we buy gets eaten. Meanwhile, the packaging that it comes in unfortunately cannot be eaten and hence makes up the remaining 95% of our refuse.

So the black bin ends up overflowing as it is now only emptied every 2 weeks. And here's rub number 2. Bin bags sitting beside the black bin don't get taken. If it's not IN the bin, it stays where it is on collection day.

Since the introduction of the scheme, my wife and I have learned lots of new "compression techniques" in order to cram as much crap as possible into the black bin. EVERYTHING gets jumped on before it is binned. Then the bin itself gets jumped on. Even then, it is still not enough and by day 10 we have at least two full bin bags that just won't go in.

Putting them in the bin after the next collection is not a solution. All this means is that you will be 4 bin bags adrift 10 days later. Then 8, then 16...

Rather than resort to fly-tipping or bonfires as some of our neigbours do, I now do a fornightly 4-mile trip by car to our nearest public refuse facility to rid myself of those 2 "surplus" binbags. That's after I've managed to manouver my car through the bin obstacle course that has developed down our small cul-de-sac now that everyone has two of the buggers.

Then I have to queue for at least 15 minutes (with the engine running) to get into the refuse facility.

I really feel like I'm doing the environment a favour. NOT.

What I do feel like is that I'm now doing refuse collection's job for them.

Once again, it's Council cost-cutting, wrapped up in pretty environmental packaging. They think they can get away with anything if they paint it green and stick a picture of a tree on it.


And Yes, a letter with much the same as the above will be sent to our Local Council. I'll post the reply if I get one.

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

If it uses about the same amount of enerty to re-use glass bottles then surely that's better than burying those bottles and hoping they'll go away, then creating more to do the same with?

Here in Poole we now have a blue bin in wich we can put cardboard, paper *including* window envelopes and most plastics (not LDPE though). This is collected every other week, which is a bit odd as it is a smaller bin.

It's not quite as good a service as in Perth, WA but it seems much better than a lot of other places in the UK from the sounds of things!

I'm really not sure how they sort it all out, maybe I'll have to e-mail them and ask. And I should ask for a reply to my question about pedestrian crossings...

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Andrew.

They probably just dump it all in the landfill!

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

While we pander to the councils pathetic attemps at 'seen to be doing good' recycling then nobody is tackling the task of disposing of rubbish efficiently.

While we keep chucking it underground then eventually the ground will get filled up. What we need is an efficient incinerator that doesn't pollute the atmosphere. Surely that can't be beyond the wit of man.

Anything burns providing you raise the temperature high enough. Surely we have the technology to clean the exhaust enough.

Is it just because there is no money in it?

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

Actually I don't think the ground will "fill up". Remember that the vast majority of the stuff we tip came out of the ground in the first place, all we are really doing is re-locating it.

The real thing we should be doing is removing potential pollutants and recycling those - ie plastic, polystyrene etc. Re-cycling paper is simply a waste of energy, if we dump it in the ground it rots down, just like it would have done if we'd left it as a fallen tree in the first place, meanwhile we expend less energy processing fresh paper than we do by re-cycling, and end up with a better quality product. In fact I think it's worse than that! How many times are we inundated with stacks of wasted paper and packaging, on the pretext that it is ok because it is recycled? If we took away that false justification then all the junk-mail and junk-packagers would have to own up to the fact that they are wasting a resource.

With the possible exception of scrap metal, the only truly plausible way to recycle is to keep the material in it's original form, like we used to do with milk bottles. As soon as we start to re-process it in any way it ceases to become viable economically, and instead is simply a politically expedient way to salve our collective conscience for the wasteful way in which we live.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

I'm sure the idea is that you make use of the recycling facilities whilst making your usual visit to the supermarket, which is only going to create a nominal amount of additional pollution.

Here we have an old massive wheelie bin which is collected weekly, and recyclables need to be in white plastic bags which is collected weekly too. They collect paper, cardboard, recycleable plastics and metals but not glass. We did have a leaflet about what plastics they take, can't remember now but I think they only want milk and drinks bottles now. We have three people in the house and the large waste bin is about 1/4-1/3 full most weeks.

There are glass banks in the car park of the local pub, otherwise everything else has to be driven 6 or 7 miles to the next town.

Gareth

Maybe the councils only want rubbish they can make money from.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

That trip is usually done on the way home from work. So I'm supposed to leave the car out in the hot sunny car park all day, filled with festering rubbish for recycling.

I don't think so somehow.