Plans To Charge For Household Rubbish

[Garden Carpet]

Go for it Kymba. The more noise you make the more they wont like it.
jaki

[Billy Wobble Dagger]

I've just found this story via H a b i t a t - Daily wildlife and environment news from the British Isles. It seems that maybe M&S and Tescos have read our thread. It certainly seems as if M&S are trying to reduce packaging. Let’s hope Tescos do the same.

Independent Online Edition > Business News

BWD

[henrya]

Originally Posted by Garden Carpet

Go for it Kymba. The more noise you make the more they wont like it.
jaki

Yes, go for it Kymba. Get your MP involved. Remember to keep copies of all the letters and emails you send, and keep a written record of telephone calls (date, time and name of person you spoke to. Probaly best to make a note of major points discussed at the time, so 'they' have less chance of denying things). A bit of a bind, but remember, these are bureaucrats you are dealing with!

henrya

[werdnal]

It really annoys me that whilst we re-cycle whatever we can, and put out about a third of a black bag a week, many similar sized households just dump the lot. However, I can't see why local authorities couldn't issue some kind of incentive to encourage people to re-cycle, instead of wielding the heavy stick and punishing those that don't. Perhaps "green" credits to use against council tax payments or something similar.

Surely some form of reward system for those who actually bother to sort, store and put out their glass, cans, paper etc, would be better that trying to enforce some sort of fines or charges which are open to abuse by unscrupulous neighbours who put their rubbish out with other people's to try to avoid fines.

Incidentally, my mum lives on the border of 2 collection rounds. If she puts her refuse at the front on the roadside, it goes on a Monday, whilst on Wednesdays, the back alley is cleared by another round, so I can see her and her neighbours sitting pretty with 2 collections a week!

[Paul mabbott]

Some (sort of) good news from the supermarket front - in Tesco yesterday and I see that much of their wrapping (at least on organic fruit/veg) now clearly states: "Will break down on the compost heap." This in contrast to Sainsburys which certainly does not!

On the other hand, an example of how it's the customers who pay for all this excess packaging: root ginger unpackaged costs about £1 100g; same ginger wrapped and labelled - more than £2 100g!

Originally Posted by fbcpmike

Refuse unwarranted packaging at the supermarkets, since when do bananas, apples and the like need plastic trays and vacuum sealing.

[Kymba]

Do what I do Paul.. take the wrapping off and leave it in the shop... I leave it where i get the item from.. let them dispose of it

[Kymba]

Well good news on My back Alley!! yesterday the enviromental people from Council turned up... Apparently he came out to look last week and couldn't believe how much more stuff had been dumped since then!! and at last we have success.. they are comming to completely clear the Alley within a month and then cleaners will regular clear and clean it after that!! I went and introduced myself to the headman.. and he said " You dont need to go to the press.. as it is my top priority to get it sorted by end of Feb!!!
I told him i will hold off but if it isn't done within nxt 5 weeks i will phone my contact and get him to do an article on it ....

[slowef]

I have just moved to WIltshire. In our village we are allowed 2 bags of rubbish a week and cardboard waste if tied up and left out. We have to take glass, cans and paper to our nearest centre which is 4 miles away. I don't mind doing this but what do we pay council tax for if we have to do most of the removals ourselves?

We are composting most of our green rubbish and burning whatever we can't re-use. Any thoughts on bonfires we live on a hill with no neighbours to annoy but are we being ozone friendly, is this better than adding to landfill I am not sure if we are doing the correct thing.

We do not put plastic on the fire, the only thing I have found no other way to dispose of and unfortunatly it is part of a shop no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

S

[nightshade]

Surely if it burns it could be composted?
bonfires are not the best way to go but
sometimes the only way

[WildGarlic]

You could send the packaging back to the manufacturers - freepost of course - together with a note explaining why you are returning it and suggesting that they reduce their packaging - especially if it's excessive.

Try not to buy stuff with packaging in the first place, and take your own bags with you when you go shopping.

Go green for £100 council tax discount

EDDIE BARNES
POLITICAL EDITOR
HOMEOWNERS who recycle their rubbish and insulate their houses properly will get council tax discounts of £100 a year, Jack McConnell has vowed.

The First Minister's pledge, to be contained in Labour's forthcoming election manifesto, will form part of a Climate Change Bill which the party will table if they are returned to power after May's Holyrood vote.

The actual reductions being offered would be left up to individual councils to decide. However, officials say they believe the £100 figure to be appropriate, amounting to a 10% reduction from the average Band D rate.

Read More

[Paul mabbott]

Well, if you want to leave your compost heap for a hundred years or so!
There are biodegradable plastics which, I estimate, take 2-3 years to degrade in a good compost heap.
Most plastics will take far longer and are more likely to be broken down physically i.e. fragmented into small pieces by worms &c than degraded chemically. If you have the time, you can shred plastics and use them to incorporate into compost or mulch - but who has the time? Also, of course, plastic shreddings look rather untidy!

Originally Posted by nightshade

Surely if it burns it could be composted?
bonfires are not the best way to go but
sometimes the only way

[slowef]

Originally Posted by WildGarlic

You could send the packaging back to the manufacturers - freepost of course - together with a note explaining why you are returning it and suggesting that they reduce their packaging - especially if it's excessive.

Try not to buy stuff with packaging in the first place, and take your own bags with you when you go shopping.



Read More

Yes it would be good to be able to buy only stuff with no packaging but a bit difficult with shampoo etc, in an ideal world maybe but not realistic. I do take my own bags and refuse extra packaging where possible

[WildGarlic]

Originally Posted by slowef

Yes it would be good to be able to buy only stuff with no packaging but a bit difficult with shampoo etc, in an ideal world maybe but not realistic. I do take my own bags and refuse extra packaging where possible

Wouldn't it be great if there were large containers of shampoo etc so that we could just take in our empty bottle and get a refill.

I run a food co-op and we try to buy the larger quantities and share them out - including refills of liquid soap, washing up liquid, and more.... but not shampoo as far as I've seen - must check that out.

Ahhh and while we are on the subject, you've just reminded me to put out my paper recycling bin - that's all that is collected from here as we are fairly rural. The rest we have to drive a minimum of 5 miles to dispose of at the nearest SMALL recycling centre.

[cybershot]

With regard to this subject it's time to name, shame and boycott the companies responsible for totally unnecessary extra wastefulness: The day before yesterday four (4) separate identical items of unsolicited junk mail, all franked at 22p, arrived on my doormat from our local branch of Mann Countrywide estate agents.

[svenrufus]

Originally Posted by cybershot

With regard to this subject it's time to name, shame and boycott the companies responsible for totally unnecessary extra wastefulness: The day before yesterday four (4) separate identical items of unsolicited junk mail, all franked at 22p, arrived on my doormat from our local branch of Mann Countrywide estate agents.

Someone locally got in the papers a few months ago for returning all his junk mail to whoever sent it to him. If it had a reply paid envelope, he would stick it all back in that and post it to whoever sent it. If it was delivered by Royal Mail (unadressed mail that is) he shoves it back in the post box for Royal Mail to collect again. Neat thinking.

[Tinkerbell]

Well, now, how about this for a government department - I don't suppose any of you will be surprised!

I've recently corresponded with the Inland Revenue about my state pension 6 year shortfall. Paid up now, and on Friday I received three letters - all the same, apart from the year differing, each being sent in a separate envelope and all second class stamps. I'm now waiting for the other three to arrive similarly. Can you see me shaking my head?

Tinkerbell

[Billy Wobble Dagger]

It looks like English councils will be given the go ahead to make these charges.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Rubbish charging given go-ahead

Oddly enough I was sent this email this morning as well about a national leave packageing at the supermarket day.

Quote:In order to get the supermarkets to cut down on excess packaging I propose that SATURDAY 15TH DECEMBER should be a Shop and Drop (all your excess packaging at the checkout) Day.

If we all do it they will have to take note – tell all your friends!

***Saturday 15th December – Shop and Drop Day*** :Unquote.

I'm sure, with only ten days till Christmas, it would make an impact if a handful of people did this at every supermarket. Don't know if I would have the nerve to do it though. I don't suppose it is against the law, is it?

It has been said already in this thread that it should be the companies sending out all this packaging who should be punished not the public. Other wise we have to make a conscious decision when we buy goods to pick the items with less or no packaging.
One thing that is for sure the amount of fly tipping is sure to increase and when the councils have to pay extra staff to pick it up, double whammy, the council tax will go up


BWD

[PeterJL]

I'm not convinced about the environmental sense of the current LA recycling schemes. I've asked our local council about the carbon cost of recycling and they didn't know what I was talking about.

This arose because of an article by someone from the glass industry who pointed out that some of the glass we recycle has ended up in containers being shipped to China and some has been crushed and used for paths etc. This is not what recycling was meant to do. The big environmental cost comes as a result of making glass in the first place and there is a much smaller cost in melting it down for re-use.

As far as collection is concerned, if you do many small recycling journeys in an Local Authority scheme than a few big ones you may well discharge more CO2 into the atmosphere overall making progress on landfill but exacerbating global warming.

Perhaps there doesn't seem much wrong with this but to me the big environmental issue is the increase in concentration of Greenhouse gases such as CO2. Worrying about landfill is way down the list compared with that. If the way you recycle increases [CO2] over that which would have happened by land fill then creating new land fill sites isn't as bad as perhaps we think.

Incidentally did you know that badly maintained land fill sites are better for the environment than well maintained ones?