Re-cycling schemes are, well, a load of rubbish..! 

Local authority kerbside re-cycling collections are inefficient, un-economical, and cause a lot of “collateral pollution”.

They are mainly done for political reasons to make people feel good about themselves for “helping to save the environment”.      

THE CON OF CO-MINGLING

KERBSIDE RE-CYCLING COLLECTIONS ARE A GUILT EXPIATION EXERCISE

“The cost of collecting, transporting and sorting materials generally exceeds the revenues generated by selling the recyclables, and is also greater than the disposal costs.  Originally kerbside programmes asked people to put paper, glass and cans into separate bins. But now the trend is toward co-mingled or “single stream” collection.  But the switch can make people suspicious: if there is no longer any need to separate different materials, people may conclude that the waste is simply being buried or burned.  In fact, the switch towards single-stream collection is being driven by new technologies that can identify and sort the various materials with little or no human intervention. Single-stream collection makes it more convenient for householders to recycle, and means that more materials are diverted from the waste stream.”   http://www.economist.com/node/9249262 (June 2007)

Talking-up the alleged advantages of “co-mingled” household waste is rather dis-ingenuous IMO.  Its as if they are saying “we can’t trust people to do any pre-sorting we’ll make it easy and let them off the hook”.  An ever-increasing tendency for people in borderless and culturally diverse “OβeCities” is to ignore the rules of good-neighbourliness.  So lets just accept the mindless “don’t give a shit” attitude of carelessly contaminating the wrong bins, thus spoiling the diligent work of those who do follow the rules.  Before long, even those who want to follow the rules will give-up.

Even if, as the article claims, everything can be mixed up then magically zapped into its constituent elements – surely this equipment must be very expensive and the process very energy intensive?  Even if there is no economic justification for pre-sorting, which I would question, surely there is great educational value in people – and especially the young – being able to identify all the various materials we use and having knowledge of their “break-down” times, their relative threats to the environment, and their costs of manufacture, etc, etc.  “Co-mingling” negates the need to educate people about these things – and that, IMO, is irresponsible.

In many parts of the UK you have to take your re-cyclables to a “re-cycling centre”, often several miles out of town.  This saves the council money by freeing them of the responsibility to collect, but what about the waste of fuel and the emissions from thousands of individual car trips..?  Most people are not going to bother to make the trip, except for items too large to be chucked in the bin, like an old mattress.  Normal everyday recyclables like paper, plastic, bottles, etc., are just going to be thrown in (“co-mingled”) with the food waste and all their regular trash.   

As I have always suspected, and as confirmed by this article, much of the plastic we use is NOT re-cyclable 

The 34 sorting categories of this small Japanese town is clearly far too complicated but, on the other hand, only 4 categories or less (e.g., paper, plastic, glass, general) is clearly inadequate.

In borderless, and increasingly culturally diverse, “OβeCities” of anonymous people who don’t even know their next-but-one neighbours – you would never manage to get more than a small number of highly dedicated re-cyclers to go to anywhere near this trouble.  Even if you did, the diligent work of a few would be spoiled (perhaps maliciously) by careless people contaminating the wrong bins.

OA-CITY SOLUTIONS

 

I hope that pre-sorting of household waste will be made a condition of residency in OΔsis Cities.  Participation in re-cycling should be a civic duty rather than a tedious option that can be willfully ignored by the apathetic, the careless, the inconsiderate, or those just “in a hurry”.

TEN TYPES OF TRASH 

10 categories of waste everyone should be able to identify without too much thought…

• PAPER & CARDBOARD,

• PLASTIC,

• GLASS,

• METAL,

• WOOD

• CLOTH,

• ELECTRICAL (“E-Waste”) 

• CHEMICALS (paint, engine oil, etc)

• FOOD

• MISSC/MIXED

FOOD WASTE – there being so much of it these days – I feel very strongly about.   When I was a boy, school dinner waste was sent to pig-farms, or so we believed.  1950’s School dinners were pretty awful so we would sing this little ditty (to the tune of Davy Crockett) – “say what you will, school dinners make you ill, da, da, da, da, etc……all school din-dins go to pig bins out of town..”  But I doubt they do so nowadays due to all the daft molly-coddling health and safety regulation or some invasive EU “directive”, not to mention the insidious “Halal certification” creeping into our lives.  

What to do with food waste?

I often juice oranges and get left with a pile of orange skins, pith, and pips.  What a waste I thought – what can I possibly do with them?   One could in theory make use of them in marmalade-making or cooking – but thats a lot of marmalade and orange-sauces..!    Those with gardens “might” put them in a composting bin – but what if you live in an apartment..?   OA-City apartments could have their own integral compost bins located so the contents could be collected from outside without disturbing the occupants.  Another useful little CAP duty

HEY, HERE’S A REALLY RADICAL IDEA – WHY NOT USE GOOD QUALITY RE-USABLE FOOD CONTAINERS..? 

Remember these…?

Thoughts for expansion…..

• Won’t good-quality re-usable container be stolen, unless a realistic deposit is charged?

• And wouldn’t deposits involve extra levels of bureaucracy and inefficiency..?

  • In OB-Cities, without realistic deposits, they probably would be stolen or “borrowed” but NOT in OA-Cities
  • OA-Cities would pass their own laws, so they could easily forbid the use of throwaway containers.

• What if some businesses refused to co-operate and continued to sell “throwaways”..?

  • If the laws stipulated that ALL outlets had to use re-usable containers (where possible) they would not lose business to others selling “throwaways”
  • Of course, none of this is going to be easy since many, if not most, food items, etc., are imported and therefore already packaged in “re-usable” or “throwaway” containers.