Model Boat Mayhem
Mess Deck: General Section => Chit-Chat => Topic started by: Colin Bishop on May 18, 2010, 06:30:04 pm
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This item on the BBC website struck a nerve: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8688547.stm
Am I the only one totally fed up with acting as a local amenity tip?
At the moment we have:
A wheelie bin for general waste
A bin for cans and plastic bottles
A bin for bottles and glass
A bin for paper (but not cardboard which I have to take down to the local tip)
A container for food waste
A pail for the kitchen to collect food waste
A composter in our very small garden (which attracts rats)
Collections are fortnightly alternating general waste with recycling.
Most of these containers clutter up my small drive and are a visual atrocity. The terraced houses on my estate have no drives and no rear access so all this lot is piled up next to the front door which constitutes a double visual atrocity.
Enough is enough!
I have no objections to recycling which is obviously a ‘good thing’ even if it does end up getting shipped to China for small children to sort through.
What I object to is the mentality of the local bureaucrats (and I used to work in Local Government) who consider that it is perfectly acceptable to ruin the appearance of the built environment in order to achieve their artificial recycling targets.
When I visited France a couple of years back the place we stayed at was provided with colour coded sacks for different items. You put your waste in the appropriate sack and took it down to the street corner where there were matching bins. These bins were emptied DAILY!
Not rocket science is it?
Colin
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Are well thats what you get living down south. :} We up North , or at least this part of Cheshire only have 3 , Yes 3 weelie Bins.. Black for all un-recyclable waste , green for garden and blue for card, glass plastic etc , all reasonably sized , a bit of an eyeshore but easier than all those small box's and bags.. ours are neatly tucked away behind the car. :-))
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You mean you get your garden waste collected? Some people just have it too easy....
Colin
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:} :} :}
But I do put a fair bit on the Allotment..
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We have two wheelie bins, one for household rubbish and one for recyclables and a reusable bag [similar to those used by builders merchants] for garden waste.
Household rubbish weekly, recyclables fortnightly, garden waste fortnightly.
Not bad, but we are not as posh as Colin.
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In Enfield they recycle the glass in the wrong way. Recycled glass added to the glass furnace helps to lower the melting temperature of the fresh batch thus saving energy on manufacture. In Enfield they grind up the recycled glass and mix it in with the tarmac to make the road surface stronger so although it is re-used it does nothing to save energy.
In Kidlington (Oxfordshire) we were not allowed to put glass in the recycling bin in case it fell out and broke.
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Not posh Richard, why would you think that? Had to take a bootfull of neighbour's foliage down to the tip this afternoon. 5 mile round trip.
One of the biggest problems as I see it is that each local council has a completely different recycling policy.
Colin
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If only you knew where all your so called recycling ends up...at least fifty per cent of it goes to the landfill sites because the recycling depots can't cope with it all.
We have three tips we go to, all the rubbish is minced up and off to the landfill it goes. At least it is recycled in a way...Hastings now has the best part of a mountain range where the old landfill site used to be, Lewes tip has added hugely to the South Downs, and now there's talk of a new landfill near Newhaven. The South Downs and the North Downs will soon be as one...
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If only you knew where all your so called recycling ends up...at least fifty per cent of it goes to the landfill sites because the recycling depots can't cope with it all.
Yes, I was aware of that, one of the reasons I am cross!
Colin
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In Chingford I have one bin for non-recycled collected weekly, three boxes for the recycling which can be anything up to car batteries and waste engine oil. One brown bin for garden and kitchen waste collected fortnightly.
I have a local tip, which takes bigger items for recycling but I think you have to pass a special jobs worth exam to work there (do not get me started on them) >>:-( >>:-( >>:-( >>:-( >>:-(
Brian
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Our local park has just been reformed and five underground bins have been added, they have small unobtrusive bins on the surface and they are as follows, two for non recyclable,one for glass, one for plastics and cartons, as in fruit juice and milk etc and the final for paper and card. These are emptied on a regular basis as are all the others located around town.
To add insult to injury our remaining household refuse is collected every night from outside of the house, for this service we pay a refuse tax of 65 euros a year on top of our rates, poll tax call it what you will, which actually is also 65 euros a year.
mind you model shops a very thin on the ground
But living in the interior of Spain has its' plus and minus points.
Regards
Maurice
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We live in a 10 storey block of flats. There are 2 wheeliebins outside, and they are emptied about 5 times a day.
Many families seperate the recyclables and put them in a different bag (usually old carrier bag) befor putting them in the wheelie bin. The local staff take aout recyclables to sell at the recyc centres.
But hey, this is China.
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NE Lincs, my local council has many failings but I think they have got the recycling bit about right
Household waste weekly, paper, glass, cans, in boxes fortnightly and garden waste and cardboard(in
the same wheelie bin) fortnightly.
Everything else we take to the amenities site (posh tip) which is a pleasure to visit.
It is run by a waste management company (not council) and has to be seen to be believed
You enter down a road lined with toilet bowls filled with flowers, little scenes made up from junk
even a dummy in evening dress sat at a piano!
The staff are helpful and pleasant.
The local schools take the pupils on visits to help make them aware of environmental issues
and the site enters the Britain in Bloom competition yearly.
Not bad for grim Grimsby!
Yours Aye
Ned
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We sort hard plastic, glass, metal, cardboard and newspaper/magazines. The rest goes to general waste. We can rent a wheelie for garden waste. As for emptying as I live in the Swedish equivalent to a housing association of 80 houses it occurs a couple of times a week.
Other larger items such as old bikes, fridges, fluorescent tubes etc we have to take to the local tip. Run by a private company it is well organised and dare one say relatively tidy.
Garden rubbish is composted and resold as, well, compost. They decompose the waste and collect the gas which is then used to provide district heating, electricity, supply their own gas station for those that have gas cars and to supply the local bus company depot (newly built, close to the tip) who run all their buses on gas.
For those interested here is a better description http://www.nsr.se/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fEnglish%2fNSR_Biogas_eng.pdf (http://www.nsr.se/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fEnglish%2fNSR_Biogas_eng.pdf)
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In a previous life I visited a company who make/import wheelie bins. One type had four separate compartments which "mated" with a special chute on the collection vehicle and automatically routed the contents of each compartment into a separate hopper i.e. one for recycling, one for landfill, one for glass etc etc. German-made, of course, but you'd already have guessed that.
Our council shreds the garden waste collected to make compost which is then used for the city's flower beds etc. You can also go to one of the recycling sites and help yourself to some for free.
Jobsworth Corner:
My barber had a visit from the Council Enforcer last week. He was told he could no longer fill ordinary bin-bags with hair sweepings and put them in a trade waste bin for landfill. No - he is now obliged to use a special Council-supplied bag which has 'Nottingham City Council - Hazardous Waste' printed on it. He was then obliged to purchase 20 of these special bags for £60, on pain of a £350 fine. It seems that the bags are collected and put into the same landfill site as the trade waste bags...........
Go for it, Ching!
FLJ
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I'm sure this has nothing to do with where you are in the country so North and South comparrisons are a bit irrelevent. We areercy of our individual councils and some are obviously better than others. What seems to be missed by everyone is the fact that these systems have nothing to do with recycling, they are driven solely by the requirement to save money. What ever system your council puts in place if they change to a bi-weekly collection service they are saving huge amounts of money.
We have to live with the atrocious eyesores of terraced streets cluttered up with various shapes and sizes of bins, all of which attract various types of vermin just so that the council can save some money. Then, as has been already pointed out, most of this gets processed and put into a landfill anyway >:-o >:-o just so that councils can be seen to create false figures and demonstrate how "Green" they are! This is all farmed out to third party company's so the council can even avoid being held accountable when things go wrong. I live down a drive and when there is any excuse for missing us, such as an irresponsibly parked car or a sniff of snow, and they simply drive past and miss us out. Then we are expected to wait another two weeks for the next collection.
This whole process is a disgrace and really winds me up.
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So let me see if I can get this straight....
Once upon a time the bins were collected from the house, emptied into the lorry and then were deposited back at the house.
Next, we got a wheelie bin - for which we paid extra(!)
Next, the bins were collected from the house, emptied into the lorry and then deposited down the road somewhere - for which we paid extra(!)
Next, we took the bins to a 'collection point', they were emptied into the lorry and then were abandoned somewhere down the road - for which we paid extra(!)
Next, we got a garden waste bin, and then the bins were emptied fortnightly to the standard as above - for which we paid extra(!)
Next, we got a 'bottles box', etc etc etc - for which we paid extra(!)
What next? We pay to sort our own refuse, drive to the tip and empty our own bins and pay even more?
The council already can't find a buyer for all the recycled crap we segregate now! So it goes in the landfill with everything else.....
-Rob
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So let me see if I can get this straight....
Once upon a time the bins were collected from the house, emptied into the lorry and then were deposited back at the house.
Next, we got a wheelie bin - for which we paid extra(!)
Next, the bins were collected from the house, emptied into the lorry and then deposited down the road somewhere - for which we paid extra(!)
Next, we took the bins to a 'collection point', they were emptied into the lorry and then were abandoned somewhere down the road - for which we paid extra(!)
Next, we got a garden waste bin, and then the bins were emptied fortnightly to the standard as above - for which we paid extra(!)
Next, we got a 'bottles box', etc etc etc - for which we paid extra(!)
What next? We pay to sort our own refuse, drive to the tip and empty our own bins and pay even more?
The council already can't find a buyer for all the recycled c--- we segregate now! So it goes in the landfill with everything else.....
-Rob
That pretty well sums it it up nicely, Rob...but it all looks good on paper, and it gives the powers that be a good excuse to call a lunch time meeting to discuss the successes of their recycling plans.
All paid for by us taxpayers, of course....
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I firmly believe the whole re-cycling thing is more about making money and creating jobs than anything green.Private companies making waste bins, private companies emptying them as well as running so-called re-cycling centres, council fining people and (FLJ's comments) ripping them off on the pretext of hazardous waste.
I come back to what i said before on a previous thread, if they were truly into re-cycling, the council would have made provision for the private companies who manage the re-cycling centres to regulate them in such a way that if you wanted a perfectly good bicycle, bedside cupboard or anything for that matter you would be able to remove it and put it back into use. I have done this on many occasions in the past and indeed have never ever bought a new mower in my life as I used to bung the tip guy £1-00 for something I wanted. Now the regulations state that anything left in the yard is the sole property of the waste management company and cannot be taken away or purchased. It is all geared up to making people buy new things in the high street and waste companies selling scrap and waste materials. Limiting quantities of rubbish which can be deposited on a daily basis means you have to make repeated trips on different days, burning fuel as you go... what the heck is green about that I wonder?
With preservation orders being enforced up and down the land we are informed that it is done to preserve our history and keep the local area in as near original condition as it used to be 100 years ago... then they make you stick ugly multi-coloured plastic bins outside... what a load of bull!!
Cynical... me, nah! Just a grey haired ole git who's been around long enough to smell a big rat!
The continentals have the best approach, large wheelie bins at the bottom of the street, concealed behind wooden fences and everyone puts their daily waste into them. The areas I have visited which use this system look neat and tidy and clean, not the two bit money making second rate eysore which affronts your eyes when you drive around streets in the UK.
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You lot are all crazy, over here we have two bins red lid rubbish, yellow lid recycled,
Red lid collected every week Yellow lid every second week............. :-)) :-))
Roy
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"....I have no objections to recycling which is obviously a ‘good thing’ even if it does end up getting shipped to China for small children to sort through..."
I have major objections to 'recycling'.
1 - everything in this world is recycled in some way. Everything comes from the ground and goes back there at some stage.
2 - if it is economically feasible to intercept some items on their continual journey from earth to raw material to finished product and back again to earth and re-introduce them into the manufacturing process, this will be done (as it already is being) by people in a position to do it.
3 - what is sold to us as 'good recycling' to 'save the planet' is a distortion of this economic cycle. People are having to pay subsidies to maintain an inefficient operation. And once you start providing taxpayer's money to subsidise operations which cannot be valued in the marketplace, and are only 'valued' by the political activists who run these schemes, then you have laid the groundwork for extensive and continuing scams. These are now endemic in the whole 'green' farrago - look at the solar energy scandals in Spain. We are now being required to pay much more than market price for energy - and a lot of that 'much more' price will be going into third parties pockets...
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I firmly believe the whole re-cycling thing is more about making money and creating jobs than anything green.
I repectfully disagree. I think the problem with today's household waste is largely down to insane amounts of over-packaging. Since we moved over to a pair of bins - one for "rubbish" and one for "recycle" (and neither including glass*) - I'm finding that I'm filling up the recycle bin the fastest. :o
IF supermarkets didn't, for example, put their (overly perfect) individually labelled fruit in a cardboard tray with a cellophane wrapper bearing a sticky label showing us what fruit it was (!) and then bunging all that into a plastic bag, we'd not be carting home so much stuff to ditch later on.
Andy
*This isn't because "it might fall out the bin", it's because people sort the recycled waste on conveyor belts and want to finish work that day with the same numbers of fingers that they started with.
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Well, I've just been up to my re-cycle centre this afternoon as it happens. I went to deposit all the detritus left over from working on the house and theewas all manner of stuff eg; rubble ,wood, glass, bits of tiles etc etc. The guys there were very polite and very helpful and even helped me unload the car. I had a couple of bags of grout and floor tile adhesive (large ones) and we dumped those in the general waste skip but when it came to a half empty bag of plaster he informed me I could not dump it. When I enquired what I should do with it I was informed that two other tips were allowed to accept it, one was in Norwich, the other in Great Yarmouth. If I used either of those it would result in a twenty mile round trip just to get rid of half a bag of plaster!!
My green trip to the tip has now turned into a planet destroying, Co2 filled nightmare should I choose to do their bidding.
My intention is to mix it with water, let it harden, break it up and slowly but steadily feed it into my dustbin waste a bit at a time till it's gone. There is b*gg*r all green about a trip to the re-cycling centre!!
Somewhere there is a little incompetent beaurocrat who needs a good clout round the ears to wake him up.
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Why do we need these "councils" anyway? I still think that a council should keep the roads Ok, and the footpaths, and the council houses, parks, collect rubbish, (possibly) run the schools and all the other stuff that enhances normal life...so where and why do they think they are a seperate entity and free to impose very odd-ball political beliefs. That is not what councils are for. But given the recent history of Central Government who can really blame them for grabbing what they can....and employing many otherwise unemployables. Rant over. BY.
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why do they think they are a seperate entity and free to impose very odd-ball political beliefs.
Because people like you and I elect them Bryan - or allow them to be elected by not voting for someone more sensible, or if there is no one more sensible, by standing for election ourselves.
The people who run councils should be people who don't want to run them...
Colin
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Just see what happens when the new coalition devolves more power to the regions as promised. <:(
We had weelkly bin collections . Our council told us they would provide 'extra bin collections' hooray. Then we got 'extra bins' and they collect them - sometimes.
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In our little corner of Australia we have 2 wheelie bins, one for general waste, and the other for recyclables. All recyclable materials including paper, cardboard, glass, steel cans including empty aerosol cans, and plastic go into the recycle bin. Plastics are coded 1 to 5, clearly marked, usually on the bottom of the container. Numbers 1, 2 & 5 are recyclable, the others are not. All other waste goes into the general waste bin, which is collected weekly, and the recycle bin fortnightly. Simple O0 BTW, the council actually provides the bins, the cost of which is probably (certainly??) included in the waste collection levy.
Regardless of all of the above, I am not convinced that all the recyclable material is actually recycled, as there seems to be something of a world wide glut of such material. The theory is good, but whether it works as it should in practice is another matter.
Peter.
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Hmmph!...Bins?
Mungo got big bonfire!
Mungo not talk Councils.
Mungo not vote.
All crawl-a**es, want power.
Regards,
Mungo (Vintagent)
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Mungo got big bonfire!
Mungo causes ash cloud then - not volcano?
Mungo's details now being circulated to all UK airlines..... :}
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Mungo not like Tornadoes screachin' round all day from RAF Marham!
Mungo make BIGGER bonfire. O0
BTW We're a two bin council, but just down the road my son has three bins and a box!
Our council has just bought some Dennis half-and-half lorries that pick up both recycling and ordinary rubbish each week, but ...presumably only half as much!
£130,000 each!
When I were nobbut a lad, we had a single tin dustbin that was loaded into one of those Dinky toys with the roller sides.
It HAS to be all that packaging doesn't it? Or were we just less wasteful?
Regards,
Vintagent
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We simply couldn't afford the goods then and couldn't generate this amount of waste in those days. Most things were wrapped in paper or cardboard and were much more environmentally friendly... with the exception of our coal fires of course and you know where the ash went! Thats why we had steel dustbins and dustbin men with bad backs.
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Mungo only pawn in game of life! Thats says it all really. :((
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When I were nobbut a lad, we had a single tin dustbin that was loaded into one of those Dinky toys with the roller sides.
On one of my first foreign holidays in 1967 we met up with a bunch of students in Salzburg who were touring Europe in one of those old roller siide lorries. They had converted the waste storage into sleeping quarters!
Colin
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Oh, Colin...pongy or what?
Those lorries used to stink something chronic!
As for ash we used it on the garden, mainly my two Nans who lived opposite and had HUGE gardens/allotments.
Sheerline...am I missing something about Mungo there? I got the Mungo habit when I was living at the boatyard and we had a quiet, OK slightly retarded man who was immensely strong, some called him the Human JCB, but he spoke in that truncated way and the other guys christened him Mungo. He could lift an oak plank for our boat on his own!! He could also sink more tea than anyone I've ever known. We usually made a pot just for him!
Regards,
Vintagent
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So we try to do the right thing with regard to rubbish?
While spending christmas down in the south west we had a fair amount of packaging to be disposed of. Yes! Recycle it!
Removed all plastic packing and left the cardboard in the correct place for the weekly collection. It was all nice and dry having been under cover.
Went out shopping during which time it rained/sleeted/snowed.
Returned home to find a massive pile of wet soggy cardboard in the driveway.
Contacted local council to find out why it had not been taken.
Reply "Oh yes, we collected cardboard in your area today". Why was this soggy mass left?
"How large was it?" It's mainly the packing from a large TV.
"Oh that's why it's still there, we only take small pieces of card that will fit through the hole in the side of the waggon".
And what are we supposed to do with this mess?
"Take it to the dump site" (Only about eight miles away).
So we are "green", I had to squash a pile of very wet packing down to get it into my car and dump it. (Ever thought of how to cut up card that is soaked?).
The first council official that mentions the G word to me will, very likely, get a blast that they will remember for a good while.
The official policy is now "be green - but only if you have SMALL pieces of packing".
Even my cat would laugh at this mess.
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%% when we think about it more......it wasn't all that many thousand years ago that our forebears had fewer problems...........as they only needed to dispose of
1. a few dozen dinosaur bones that couldn't be used for anything else
2. left over dinosaur steaks from the BBQ that were rancid & even the animals would not eat them >>:-(
3. human bodily waste
4. dead human bodies
They had no issues with the need to sort PET recyclable plastic to non recyclable plastic....green glass to clear glass....& oil was just still being converted from decaying carbon....to the precious $ as we know it today..... %% {-) O0 ;D :embarrassed: :D .....Derek
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Ah, so that's why they never dig up old galvo dustbins on Timeteam!
Vintagent
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got no bins in perranporth only black sacks collected weekly regiment
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Hi Vintangent, what a coincidence this Mungo thing is. The film 'Blazing Saddles' contains a character called Mungo, he's built like an ox and actually rides one in the film. He is seen holding a barful of blokes back against a wall and speaks in a similar manner to that you portrayed in your comments. One of his lines was that which I quoted. I can recommend the film as a ruddy good belly laugh all the way through but I guess it's all down to each individuals humour. It's a Mel Brookes film and sends up just about everything and is totally non-pc..... right up my street! :-))
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Hey Sheerline,
blimey, my memory must be getting bad. I'm sure I saw that film and loved it, but I can't remember a Mungo in it!
I agree it was a brilliant film with the coloured gentleman putting a gun to his own head and saying nobody move or the ****** gets it!
Yep. If it comes round again (and what doesn't on TV?) I'll be sure to watch it.
I reckon that's where my cohorts at the yard would have got the Mungo idea, they just didn't let on.
Regards,
Vintagent
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Ah, yeah - Mungo.
Didn't they have him chained to a tree in that breaking-wind scene?
Talking of whom...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU60tj1CDzg
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PMK, behave yourself man... any excuse to get a bit of music going!! {-)