Recycling in Bristol
Discussion
IanReid said:
steviebee said:
it would also be akin to thowing money away given that the seperated waste material is treated as a commodity and has high value - particulalry steel and glass.
Why do you continually mention steel and glass in a thread about household rubbish. It's completely irrelvant. This is typical of the muddled thinking that shows the thing for the utter shambles it is.
I suspect that he means household bottles and cans. But it is well known that it is far cheaper (both financially and ecologically) to make new glass and steel. They're not in very short supply are they?
I've only just become aware of these ridiculous brown swill-bins (having managed to remove myself from this urban cack-hole that used to be a nice city). They seem very popular with the insect population
As an aside, steviebee, since you are an expert on the excellent work of BCC, what happens to the swill? Is it fed to pigs or what?
kooper said:
pdV6 said:
neil_cardiff said:
last week ... NONE of our rubbish was taken away becuase our bins were slightly open, and we had left some extra bags by the side
Grrr. That's a real wind up.
Ok, so extra bags aren't allowed. Just leave them then.
Ok, so the bin is supposed to be fully shut. Why FFS? What does it matter to the bin collector whether its open a few inches or not? Makes no odds. Fully open with a delicately balanced stack of bags teetering on top I can see would be a H&S issue, but to leave ALL the rubbish for a bin lid left ajar really smacks of pettiness.
Do the binmen have a list of how many bins belong to each block of flats? If not then the simple answer is to steal some bins from a neighbouring block. Then if you steal enough to have about 10 bins you should be sorted.
I like your style
Yertis said:
IanReid said:
steviebee said:
it would also be akin to thowing money away given that the seperated waste material is treated as a commodity and has high value - particulalry steel and glass.
Why do you continually mention steel and glass in a thread about household rubbish. It's completely irrelvant. This is typical of the muddled thinking that shows the thing for the utter shambles it is.
I suspect that he means household bottles and cans. But it is well known that it is far cheaper (both financially and ecologically) to make new glass and steel. They're not in very short supply are they?
I've only just become aware of these ridiculous brown swill-bins (having managed to remove myself from this urban cack-hole that used to be a nice city). They seem very popular with the insect population
As an aside, steviebee, since you are an expert on the excellent work of BCC, what happens to the swill? Is it fed to pigs or what?
The glass from your jars and bottles is either ground up for use in building materials or to make new glass jars and bottles. It's also used in road surfaces.
Cans are used to make steel.
It's at about 25% cheaper to make these products using recycled materials as the cost of extraction of the raw material is going skywards.
The food waste is taken to an in-vessel composting plant (in Dorset I think). At this facility all the food waste is put into a closed container known as a vessel. It is heated to above 70 degrees Celsius and composted for at least 100 days. After this process is complete the resulting compost can be used as a soil improver, for example in local parks.
steviebee said:
The food waste is taken to an in-vessel composting plant (in Dorset I think). At this facility all the food waste is put into a closed container known as a vessel. It is heated to above 70 degrees Celsius and composted for at least 100 days. After this process is complete the resulting compost can be used as a soil improver, for example in local parks.
And how much energy does transporting it to Dorset and heating it to above 70degrees use? Why not just feed it to the pigs, or throw it in the sea for fish to eat?
Yertis said:
steviebee said:
The food waste is taken to an in-vessel composting plant (in Dorset I think). At this facility all the food waste is put into a closed container known as a vessel. It is heated to above 70 degrees Celsius and composted for at least 100 days. After this process is complete the resulting compost can be used as a soil improver, for example in local parks.
And how much energy does transporting it to Dorset and heating it to above 70degrees use? Why not just feed it to the pigs, or throw it in the sea for fish to eat?
Unfortunatley, the great and the good at DEFRA decree that pig and all animal feed is of a certain quality these days.
Most in-vessel plants are self powering in that the process creates energy which is used to power the plant although there is the issue of transportation. BCC along with other local councils are looking at building a plant in the Bristol area but have to show that there is a certain level of waste generated over a certain period of time before they can get funding.
Yertis said:
steviebee said:
Most in-vessel plants are self powering in that the process creates energy...
Doesn't that contravene thermodynamic laws?
Very possibly (I just write and design the leaflets!!)
I think the rule of thumb is that the "new" energy needed to run the process is considerably less as a result of the enrgy that the process itself creates.
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