Plastic Rubbish
Discussion
The Mad Monk said:
Well don't stand there staring at it! Pick it up! Put it in the rubbish bin!
It's gone beyond just picking it up. There is about 8 million tonnes of new plastic entering the oceans each year. If you pick it up, there will be a new bit to replace it tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. DurianIceCream said:
The Mad Monk said:
Well don't stand there staring at it! Pick it up! Put it in the rubbish bin!
It's gone beyond just picking it up. There is about 8 million tonnes of new plastic entering the oceans each year. If you pick it up, there will be a new bit to replace it tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. I went to my local shop recently and a gang of kids was sat across the road on the benches eating crisps and sweets. When I came out they'd gone and every single packet was on the floor. The best bit? There is a bin at either end of the two benches
This will not happen again, I'll take pics next time and post it up on the local FB page which is amazingly set up to keep the place clean!
The basics are this; no-one gives a f
k.rxe said:
As I have kids, I see it really clearly - pretty much everything that is bought for them is short life, and will be in the bin in less than a year. In most cases it will be in the bin in less than a week.
We've been conscious of this and have gone with quality not quantity. A bunch of plastic tat toys from Home Bargains might be cheap, but it isn't going to last. My sons toys are pretty much exclusively Brio, Lego and Siku. I'm sure none of those are without various environmental issues but I'm confident all 3 ranges will last a lifetime and then some. We've not yet had to throw a single thing out and the plan long term is to box it up when he has outgrown it so it can be handed down.
Randy Winkman said:
WindyCommon said:
StevieBee said:
...
This is a topic that falls squarely in my field and something that I am getting increasingly involved with here and internationally. I was going to open an 'ask a recycling expert anything' thread but will attempt to answer anything here instead.
This is a topic that falls squarely in my field and something that I am getting increasingly involved with here and internationally. I was going to open an 'ask a recycling expert anything' thread but will attempt to answer anything here instead.
This didn't get the recognition it deserved.
I own a behaviour change communications company and wear two hats. In the UK, i develop and deliver any number of initiatives aimed at improving the level and quality of public participation in waste and recycling services as well as gathering vital insight into participation that helps to inform the development of services.
Delivered around 140 local authority projects since 2003.
To stem any (understandable) suggestion that we are in some way bleeding the public sector of money for some glorified ad-agency type service; the reverse is the case. Our work is driven by the need to deliver cost savings. If you live in Warwickshire for instance, your county council is £900,000 a year better off as a result of a £80k project we delivered that cut food waste going to landfill by 25%. Just finished a project in Bexley: £135k of savings from a £25k project.
Internationally, I work mostly in post-conflict, low income and emerging economic regions on international financed projects supporting waste sector reforms; normally part of economic development programmes. My role is to ensure that the services and systems being planned can be communicated to the population they serve and are appropriate the regions they will extend into - and then develop the supporting communications when ready.
Sometimes wear a third hat...or rather; costume:
Prinny said:
CardinalFang said:
baptistsan said:
I'm sat here with a 'plastic' cup made from starch. Why don't we see more of that? Sure M&S started to make the windows of their sandwich packaging from cellulose. Not sure if this is still the case. Alternatives are available but just don't seem to have hit the mainstream.
Cup from here http://www.biopac.co.uk/
Your right & good for you for taking the step. Just out of interest - where did you get that cup?Cup from here http://www.biopac.co.uk/
It's incentives though. Where are they? Who benefits? Who loses out? How? Look at Pringles tubes - just stupid. Even a simple water or milk bottle, could be 100% re-used, except for the fact that the body & the cap are different polymers. Somebody, somewhere has to separate the two & somebody somewhere has to pay for that.
Your plastic bottle is made of recycled plastic (is much harder/thicker & less transparent), and/or, it’s not, in which case there’s a 25p surcharge added at time of purchase. Bring the bottle back to the shop & recycle in the machine, get 25p credit back.
Works well (they do the same for glass), and it’s ‘fun’ putting the bottles in the machine. (yes, I should get out more).
Upsides include:
- less thrown away plastic bottles.
- Government gets seen as being ‘green’
- semi-centralised life-cycle, the distribution hauliers taking the produce to the store can return by way of the bottle recycler, giving efficiency gains.
rev-erend said:
Prinny said:
CardinalFang said:
baptistsan said:
I'm sat here with a 'plastic' cup made from starch. Why don't we see more of that? Sure M&S started to make the windows of their sandwich packaging from cellulose. Not sure if this is still the case. Alternatives are available but just don't seem to have hit the mainstream.
Cup from here http://www.biopac.co.uk/
Your right & good for you for taking the step. Just out of interest - where did you get that cup?Cup from here http://www.biopac.co.uk/
It's incentives though. Where are they? Who benefits? Who loses out? How? Look at Pringles tubes - just stupid. Even a simple water or milk bottle, could be 100% re-used, except for the fact that the body & the cap are different polymers. Somebody, somewhere has to separate the two & somebody somewhere has to pay for that.
Your plastic bottle is made of recycled plastic (is much harder/thicker & less transparent), and/or, it’s not, in which case there’s a 25p surcharge added at time of purchase. Bring the bottle back to the shop & recycle in the machine, get 25p credit back.
Works well (they do the same for glass), and it’s ‘fun’ putting the bottles in the machine. (yes, I should get out more).
Upsides include:
- less thrown away plastic bottles.
- Government gets seen as being ‘green’
- semi-centralised life-cycle, the distribution hauliers taking the produce to the store can return by way of the bottle recycler, giving efficiency gains.
There's always a 'but' so here it is.
Local authorities run waste and recycling services within very narrow financial windows. In many cases, particularly those that sub-contract to external companies, the cost of those contracts is determined partly by the value of the recycling collected. Any system that reduces the amount of recycling collected at the kerbside would have serious consequences on council finances and services. This could be overcome with the realignment of income but it would not be without a lot of contractural issues.
The system you refer to also falls under the definition of 'Producer Responsibility' - the concept that the producers of the packaging make a financial contribution to its recovery. In the UK, we operate a 'Polluter Pays' principle - in other words, we pay for the services of recovery through taxation (bit more complex than that but that's the essence). Adopting Producer Responsibility in the UK would require a very major shift in the governance of waste, policy, legislation, funding, etc. Again; entirely possible but far from a simple process.
Then you have the need to fund the infrastructure to support the change.
It is all possible. I know the CEO of Zero Waste South Australia who did this very thing in that part of the world. It took the best part of 20 years. 30% of which was gaining political support, 30% gaining the support of the producers and the rest setting up the systems.
4154QLD said:
Nothing more than a minor observation, but I've just returned to Brisbane after spending 4 weeks in the UK visiting family for Christmas. In our travels to visit in Beasonsfield, Marlow, South Oxfordshire, Ilkley, Teweksbury, Monmouth, Winchester and finally near Swindon, we could not believe the amount of discarded plastic and general crap littered about the place.
I've lived overseas for the best part of 10 years and we travel back to the UK every 2/3 years, but on this last trip the amount of rubbish, mostly plastic bottles etc really surprised us.
But this is down to the scum who just throw their rubbish around, generally don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. They’ll scatter whatever happens to be in their pudgy mitt at any point in time. Reducing their access to plastic is not really the answer. I've lived overseas for the best part of 10 years and we travel back to the UK every 2/3 years, but on this last trip the amount of rubbish, mostly plastic bottles etc really surprised us.
227bhp said:
Saleen836 said:
Will we start seeing our roads made from plastic?
If that happened and they were better than the crap they put down now it would be fantastic.They sound a bit slippery though?!Jonesy23 said:
Downsides would include:
Increased shipping costs due to extra packaging weight.
Environmental costs of checking and cleaning reusable containers
Screwing up multidrop shipping due to adding all the stuff to go on the return trip (if they followed your model rather than dedicated shipping)
Extra overhead for producers to cover the whole cycle of recovering and reusing bottles.
No one actually wants this sort of thing apart from politicians wanting to be seen as green. The only model it ever really worked for was milk bottles, and to a lesser extent local breweries.
Jonesy23: Good points, but...Increased shipping costs due to extra packaging weight.
Environmental costs of checking and cleaning reusable containers
Screwing up multidrop shipping due to adding all the stuff to go on the return trip (if they followed your model rather than dedicated shipping)
Extra overhead for producers to cover the whole cycle of recovering and reusing bottles.
No one actually wants this sort of thing apart from politicians wanting to be seen as green. The only model it ever really worked for was milk bottles, and to a lesser extent local breweries.
Shipping/transport costs are "a market" & subject to all the usual factors like supply & demand, but some of the parameters are immovable. I can't just ask a supplier to force 100mt into a trailer or container, because there's a legal limit on the total weight of the "unit" on the road in UK/EU. It would cost me the same to move plastic as paper, for example $1000 for a 40' container from Leicester to Nhava Sheva (India) or €500 for a trailer from Leicester to Gdansk. Metal scrap would cost more, not because it's heavier, but because there's more risk of it damaging the container. You are right - more waste = more transport = more pollution = more environmental issues.
Yes there are costs to clean, sort & pack, waste, but if I'm a bottle, or box manufacturer, dirty, unsorted, contaminated incoming raw materials, create more work & costs for me, or a lower quality end product, to sell. More sophisticated segregation at the household would help that, but then you have to rely on idiots like me to do the job properly & consistently.
Here's a real example: glass. Excess bottle fragments in a bale of cardboard or paper will damage a paper mill. Guaranteed. If I sold that bale, I'm going to be billed & I have to go back to a supplier, to get a refund, or discount.
Example 2: Imagine the stink if 25mt of uncleaned, mouldy ready meal boxes was sat in a container for 6 weeks, trundling through a middle eastern summer on it's merry way to China. Or how about, soiled nappies? I'v seen the end result after just 3 days on the road & it's utterly revolting.
.
If the German model keeps it's material in the country, or only ships to Poland, then those issues could be reduced, but yes, overall, somehow, the carbon miles in shipping have to be reduced somewhere along the line.
The return trip is an interesting one. For many years waste exporters like me have benefited from the fact that if Panasonic wanted to ship a container of expensive OLED's from China to Chelmsford, they'd pay top dollar for moving "finished goods": say, around $3,000. I USED to be able to do the shipping line a "favour", by sending an otherwise empty container back filled with waste - at a rate which just covered their costs - around $1,000. Now, however, Shippers are seeing a shift in the balance of trade & more finished goods are going the other way - from EU/UK to China. The result? They want us all to pay the full rate & unless you're Toyota, or Amazon, you don't get to negotiate with these people. Result? $$$+++ to someone, somewhere.
(It's the same with trailers: I book an otherwise empty one on it's return journey to Poland, after it's dropped off 25mt of sausages in Chipping Sodbury & get a reduced rate compared to Mr Sausage)
Yep, correct, recovery, segregation, cleaning, shipping & re-processing all cost & improving any part of that is very unlikely to cost LESS in the short term. "Polluter Pays" is the current proposed model, but you can imagine the objections from manufacturers, retailers & ultimately consumers (voters, let's not forget).
Good subject - appreciate your input - lets keep the discussion going.
StevieBee said:
I tell people how to use their bins and what to recycle ..... etc
Many thanks Stevie. I spent many years working on various producer responsibility issues; I asked because I got so used to hearing people give "facts" that were nothing of the sort. But your stuff looks good. 
AMG Merc said:
SteveiBee, there was a report a while back about UK collected recycling waste ending up being mixed back together in landfill in The Netherlands. Obviously this is a big disincentive to recycling. Can you comment on where our waste goes and what happens to it?
The exact routes and processes for recycling vary depending on where you are in the country.It's worth remembering that recycling is a commodity that retains a value and is sold on open markets to whoever wants it. Like all commodities, the value fluctuates.
Disposing of waste in landfill costs a huge amount of money - up to £180 or more per tonne. Recycling generates a revenue (or at the very least, a cost less than 25% compared to disposal). Each household generates around 1 tonne of waste per year and on average, contributes from council tax around £80 a year towards waste services (which also includes parks, streets sweeping and crematoriums) so there is no financial incentive to collect waste and then dump it. But it does sometimes happen for various reasons.
The principal reason is contamination - too much of the wrong materials. Tolerance for this is normally around 5% to 8%. If it gets up above 10% contamination then the value of the recycling (commodity) reduces or can even be rejected by the processors. It's rarely cost effective to re-sort an entire load so in that instance - it all gets dumped as it's the least worse option of the two. This happens quite a lot and a lot of our work is geared to tackle this.
There are operational reasons as well.
If a waste truck breaks down or gets a puncture, then it might not be possible to reach all the homes on a round to collect the recycling. To avoid having people with no collections, sometimes the remainder of rounds have their recycling dumped in the normal rubbish truck just so the operations can keep up. Even so, some attempt at separation will happen at a transfer station.
I'm not familiar with the reasoning behind the Netherlands issue. I believe landfill there is more expensive than the UK. What some commercial operators do is store dry recycling if the price is low and wait for the price to rise before putting onto the open market. But if the price remains low for a period of time, then the cost of storage exceeds any profit that will be achieved as well as the capacity issues of storing additional materials. So some may be inclined to dump - although this is exceptionally rare. Most will find a market; normally Energy from Waste where the recycling is used as a fuel - a lower price is paid but it at least generates revenue and the material is put to use.
But as I say, these instances are rare and should not deter anyone from recycling.
227bhp said:
If that happened and they were better than the crap they put down now it would be fantastic.They sound a bit slippery though?!
recycled newspaper is already used as a "filler" in road building: it's early days, but has some impetus. It's used in household insulation too, I believeEdit - just saw the comment above about plastics being used for same. Sorry I missed that.
Edited by CardinalFang on Friday 12th January 10:32
CardinalFang said:
Your right & good for you for taking the step. Just out of interest - where did you get that cup?
It's incentives though. Where are they? Who benefits? Who loses out? How? Look at Pringles tubes - just stupid. Even a simple water or milk bottle, could be 100% re-used, except for the fact that the body & the cap are different polymers. Somebody, somewhere has to separate the two & somebody somewhere has to pay for that.
Actually picked it up from the Sudbury food festival, it had beer in it! It's incentives though. Where are they? Who benefits? Who loses out? How? Look at Pringles tubes - just stupid. Even a simple water or milk bottle, could be 100% re-used, except for the fact that the body & the cap are different polymers. Somebody, somewhere has to separate the two & somebody somewhere has to pay for that.
It was sourced from these guys http://www.biopac.co.uk/ who do a whole range of items, but in bulk.
Randy Winkman said:
StevieBee said:
I tell people how to use their bins and what to recycle ..... etc
Many thanks Stevie. I spent many years working on various producer responsibility issues; I asked because I got so used to hearing people give "facts" that were nothing of the sort. But your stuff looks good. The waste industry is one that can be unduly influenced by the opinions of a few that are all too often unrooted in any evidence. I do my bit to fill the void!
StevieBee said:
I tell people how to use their bins and what to recycle.
I own a behaviour change communications company
We may have bumped into each other at RWM or some other forum over the last few years. I've certainly heard of your firm Steve. Keep up the good work. CF (Neil)I own a behaviour change communications company
baptistsan said:
Actually picked it up from the Sudbury food festival, it had beer in it!
It was sourced from these guys http://www.biopac.co.uk/ who do a whole range of items, but in bulk.
Yep, sorry, you did say in your original post. Very good idea: without wanting to divert the subject away from plastics, beverage cups are a hot topic in recycling at the moment.It was sourced from these guys http://www.biopac.co.uk/ who do a whole range of items, but in bulk.
StevieBee said:
There's always a 'but' so here it is.
Local authorities run waste and recycling services within very narrow financial windows. In many cases, particularly those that sub-contract to external companies, the cost of those contracts is determined partly by the value of the recycling collected. Any system that reduces the amount of recycling collected at the kerbside would have serious consequences on council finances and services. This could be overcome with the realignment of income but it would not be without a lot of contractural issues.
Just to expand a little on this point from StevieBee. The mechanics of this model are incredibly conflicted. On the one hand, there are councils, who want to fix budgets, for several years in advance, so when they sub contract out to your household collectors (The Viridor's Veolia's, AmeyCespas of this world, & hundreds of smaller companies up & down the country) it will, in all likelihood be at a fixed rate per tonne, or at a rate subject to, maybe yearly review. (StevieBee, fell free to contradict here - I don't deal with the public sector end of things). The collector will be running a potentially huge operation & has a fixed cost per tonne to collect, clean, sort, store, bale etc. But...on the other hand, the collector has to sell to people like me, into a fully OTC (non exchange based, B2B), global commodities market, dominated by a small number of huge Chinese multinationals - literally 3 mill groups buy the majority of our paper/cardboard waste. Bizarrely, these buyers mostly trade on a Thursday in UK & whilst prices generally operate within a range - "events" happen, like this Chinese ban on plastics, for example. It doesn't take much for a reprocessor to move into a loss making position: they HAVE to shift, (to take a larger firm as an example) 20,000mt of waste out of their yard every month, because if they stuck it in a corner to rot (paper), blow around the neighbourhood (plastic) or rust (steel cans), whilst prices come back, their council clients would cancel contracts & the Environment Agency would be all over them, not to mention the local community & press. Would you want to be a collector/recycler? It's terrifying & that's before you factor in things like finance, credit, exchange rate fluctuations & shipping, further down the line!Local authorities run waste and recycling services within very narrow financial windows. In many cases, particularly those that sub-contract to external companies, the cost of those contracts is determined partly by the value of the recycling collected. Any system that reduces the amount of recycling collected at the kerbside would have serious consequences on council finances and services. This could be overcome with the realignment of income but it would not be without a lot of contractural issues.
Edited by CardinalFang on Friday 12th January 11:31
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