Recycling - A waste of energy?

[ashby_1963]

I try to recycle all my containers but the Council insists that they are free from all traces of food.

I am concerned that the environmental damage caused by the dertergent and hot water needed to achieve this completely negates the benefit of receycling the container.

Any thoughts?

[demicav]

I always give things a rinse before putting them in the recycle bin but I don't worry too much if they're not perfect. I know what you mean about hot water ect. Also when you're on a water metre every bit of water counts.

[svenrufus]

Too much contamination can lead to a batch of collected recycling being rejected by the end user - the stuff that has been collected may then end up being dumped in a landfill. The additional energy used in making clean water, and any detergents etc to clean it is less than that which would be used to extract and process new raw materials, to substitute for the loss of recyclate entering the system if the load is rejected

At least this is what the council will tell you. I have some reservations about this, as for metals which will be heated to temperatures sufficient to melt them, the residual food in the tins would be burnt off, and no worse than the contamination of the glues that hold the paper to a tin. As for glass, I am sure you will be as shocked as me when you learn that most of the glass that is collected in the UK does not go to make new glass, it goes into making roads - yes that's right, roads. Your hard fought for recycling which you slavishly clean and take to the bottle bank every week as part of doing your bit for the environment is helping people drive around a bit more easily. An outrage, and I urge you all to contact your local authority to find out if this happens in your area and make a stink if it does.

As for paper, this is the one area where contamination really is an issue - there is a good market for recycling collections in the UK, but it needs certain levels of purity for each grade of paper to be able to assure use - otherwise it quickly gets chucked into the lowest of the low in terms of paper quality and so more trees are felled to make the better grades of paper.

Plastics get exported on the whole, often to China on the retun leg of ships that are empty after bringing over another load of useless plastic junk to go in Argos and the like. I am not too sure what the issues of contamination are here, but I understand that this is also fairly inconsequential.

Whatever the reality of the impact that dirt has on the materials and the ability to recycle them, if it is true that the materials are rejected if too contaminated, it is better to clean them - but only if they are actually going to be used in the right way - why worry cleaning glass if it makes roads not bottles. I'd rather it actually went to landfill on that basis.

[Pat]

I put out some cardboard a couple of weeks ago but council didn't take it, I waited for them last week and asked them why, they said it was because a couple of bits were overlapping the side of the container and if I wanted them to take it I had to cut it up into small pieces or put the lot in a black plastic bag

[Hedge Witch]

Nothing surprises me - the recycling operatives in my area are a bunch of "jobs-worths" and will refuse to collect the bin if it is 2.5 m into the property boundary rather than 2.0 m. And we had a fight on our hands for them just to come out with this measurement. I was so annoyed with their attitude for a while that I measured this distance and out a red mark on the ground and faced the handles away from them just to prove a point (previously I'd been maneuvering the bin in their favour). It's been a real battle of wills and more than once I've photographed the whole Friday morning fiasco.

They use any excuse not to take the rubbish and we've had many a cut finger had washing the recyclable waste. But we don't have a dishwasher, so at least we don't waste anything extra washing the waste bottles and cans - we simply wash them up at the end in the used washing-up water.

[ashby_1963]

Loads of people have had the same problem as Hedge Witch with pedantic refuse collecters refusing to collect.

I had a long battle with West Sussex council regarding the issue of the precise placement of my bin; I have since moved to North Lincs. and the opposite is true, they have been excellent in this respect and are not afraid to use a bit of common sense.

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by ashby_1963

I try to recycle all my containers but the Council insists that they are free from all traces of food. I am concerned that the environmental damage caused by the dertergent and hot water needed to achieve this completely negates the benefit of receycling the container. Any thoughts?

Using domestic clean heated water to wash material for recycling processing is almost certainly a 'poor' environmental practice. There are some alternatives, the most obvious is the use of 'grey water', at its simplest this is just washing out tins etc with the very last of the water from normal washing up. It is also possible to adapt waste pipe out flow - particularly from washing machines, to rinse tins, bottles etc over an external drain, similarly with rainwater. A more radical solution is using tins as slug/snail traps, or even making a snail box to work in the same manner as a wormery, these of course are only seasonally viable.

Perhaps most importantly, if it is the case that a product is proving 'expensive' to recycle, then a search for an alternative may be the best solution and consumer choice can be an important motivator in this so buying fressh product rather than tinned/bottled could in some circumstances be the sound environmental solution.

CM

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by svenrufus

Whatever the reality of the impact that dirt has on the materials and the ability to recycle them, if it is true that the materials are rejected if too contaminated, it is better to clean them - but only if they are actually going to be used in the right way - why worry cleaning glass if it makes roads not bottles. I'd rather it actually went to landfill on that basis.

I think there's often confusion between the need to harness the benefits of recycling on the one hand, and the need to avoid the harm of landfill disposal on the other. Although it has been fashionable to lump the two together (the Government has been especially guilty in this regard) the two issues have distinct characteristics.

The avoidance of sending something to landfill by commiting it to another use is a valuable end in itself, even if the use is not a direct recycling of the material involved. Landfill is an unavoidably harmful industrial process which in the UK has long since exhausted secondary use sites and now impacts uon thousands of hectares of farmland and what would otherwise be wildlife valuable habitat.

Although environmental restitution is required of landfill, the years in which these sites are in use causes significant harm to the local habitat. Additionally any use of landfill actually makes the economics of the process more attractive, so although throwing glass into landfill may of itself not be harmful, or even especially wastefull, it does support the economics of waste that allows disposal of long term damaging material.

As it happens the use of waste glass in road building serves two environmentally beneficial processes, firstly by having an alternate use for raw glass the material committed to finished product manafacture can be maintained at a price sustainable to allow inclusion of a recyclable element over time, in the face of fluctuating demand. Secondly, recycled glass requires no extraction costs or activity, and therefore reduces demand for quarried or dredged aggregate, quarrying and dredging both being environmentally damaging processes.

So folks, keep those bottle banks filled - they never suffer from toxic debt syndrome.

CM

[svenrufus]

Originally Posted by Cotham Marble

Secondly, recycled glass requires no extraction costs or activity, and therefore reduces demand for quarried or dredged aggregate, quarrying and dredging both being environmentally damaging processes.

So folks, keep those bottle banks filled - they never suffer from toxic debt syndrome.

CM

That's true, and indeed I realised that after I posted. I just have this instintive dislike for the idea of providing materials for roads - it is the road element I have a problem with.

I'd still like to see more re-use brought back into the waste management processes, eg deposits on bottles etc.

[Ukwildlifeo]

There is of course the debate about recycling, while it saves resources in terms of metal and trees etc, it does use a lot of energy (heating up, processing and transport) and water to recycle these materials. No one ever seems to discuss this - maybe im barking up the wrong tree lol