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Post by Alvamiga on Jul 14, 2013 9:32:48 GMT
Today, I came across yet another article showing how bad people are about waste and pollution. www.banthebottle.net/articles/the-problem-with-plastic/Do we not have more responsibility to those we leave behind than a legacy of crap because we are collectively so lazy? I have never understood why people bother with bottled water in the first place, but it's only the very tip of the iceberg.
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Post by tangent on Jul 14, 2013 9:55:54 GMT
"Instead of buying a fresh bottle of water or soft drink every day, refill an old one." The EU has introduced a regulation that makes it illegal to reuse a container and sell it unless it is specifically marked as reusable. Refilling a plastic bottle with tap water is a health hazard because bacteria multiply over time and so it's safer to buy a bottle of water.
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Post by JoeP on Jul 14, 2013 10:20:25 GMT
Recycling is only one part of it. What you're describing is reuse.
"Reduce, reuse, recycle" - in order of value - and possibly reverse order of ease. Better not to use a plastic bottle at all; if you have to, better to refill one; if you can't (the health factor that tangent points out is significant), at least send it to the recycling centre.
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Post by Alvamiga on Jul 14, 2013 10:24:36 GMT
Your first point would be covered if people would just buy reusable ones. Aside from which, recent studies have shown that almost all of the bottles already out there are perfectly safe to reuse, even if they are not labelled as reusable. Bureaucracy wins again! It's also perfectly possible to get non-plastic reusable containers anyway. Imagine the saving is places such as McDonalds didn't put those plastic covers on drinks for the benefit of people travelling in excess of ten feet to where they are going to sit and drink it! I dread to think how many million of those get put on drinks every day, just to be thrown away minutes later! They can already make plastics which prevent bacteria from growing, as per the chopping board I have. You can also wash the bottle in the same way you would any other item you use. My main thrust on this point was what makes it so hard for people to recycle 80+ percent of the stuff that is used? Society has degenerated into a throw-away culture. I still regularly see people throwing things away as rubbish when recycling it would take next to no effort.
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Post by ProdigalAlan on Jul 14, 2013 10:30:48 GMT
I can honestly say I have never bought a bottle of water in my life. A couple of months ago I built a composer out of recycled wood, for all my food waste. I am single handedly saving planet Earth
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Post by Alvamiga on Jul 14, 2013 10:33:30 GMT
JoeP makes a good subset of my point, probably with a less frustrated tone. I have been recycling and reusing my whole life. I don't see why it's so much effort for some to do it. There was some hope a while ago when the supermarkets pledged to take away the plastic bags from the checkouts so that people would be "encouraged to bring their own" but it just turned into a situation where they are now under the checkout and the cashier just passes as many out to the customers as they used previously. One negative that has come from it is that people buy the reusable bags, which are made to last longer, and then throw them away because they never have them when they go back to the supermarket and just have a mounting collection at home. At least the bags from most places are made to degrade now, with some being so degradable that they barely make it home from the shop.
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Post by JoeP on Jul 14, 2013 11:11:40 GMT
A couple of months ago I built a composer out of recycled wood Has it (he? she?) composed anything good yet? It sounds like a Ray Bradbury short story.
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Post by Alvamiga on Jul 14, 2013 11:29:36 GMT
Of course it hasn't composed anything decent. It's full of rubbish!
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Post by jayme on Jul 14, 2013 14:25:28 GMT
A couple of months ago I built a composer out of recycled wood Has it (he? she?) composed anything good yet? If the composer is made of wood, will it not decompose itself?
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Post by Miisa on Jul 14, 2013 14:42:38 GMT
Refilling a plastic bottle with tap water is a health hazard because bacteria multiply over time and so it's safer to buy a bottle of water. I don't quite see how a plastic water bottle differs in this respect from such things as sports bottles? I use both for water regularly and re-use them many, many times with tap water. But we don't really have this problem as also our water bottles are deposit, so get recycled very effectively.
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bill
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Post by bill on Jul 14, 2013 16:48:04 GMT
Plastic bags worry me. A short while ago a lot of Supermarkets seemed to be dispensing with plastic bags. However now everything is back to what it was before, at least at the supermarkets which we use. I have actually bought a cheapie shopping bag and it's a shame that other people don't follow suit. Actually, plastic bags should be banned.
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Post by Miisa on Jul 14, 2013 17:38:00 GMT
Again, I think it is a matter of poor quality bags more than anything. If you get better plastic bags they can be re-used either for shopping or for everything else and later ends life as a bin liner. But that would require paying for the bags which might be culturally unacceptable.
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bill
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Post by bill on Jul 14, 2013 18:22:05 GMT
Again, I think it is a matter of poor quality bags more than anything. If you get better plastic bags they can be re-used either for shopping or for everything else and later ends life as a bin liner. But that would require paying for the bags which might be culturally unacceptable. Well any we get do end up as bin liners etc but eventually they still end up in landfill.
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Post by Miisa on Jul 14, 2013 18:36:01 GMT
You'd have to have bin liners anyway, right? It's no big feat to make them biodegradable as well.
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Post by Kye on Jul 14, 2013 18:52:53 GMT
We have to pay a small amount for our plastic grocery bags. It seems to slightly encourage people to bring their own.
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Post by Alvamiga on Jul 14, 2013 19:17:38 GMT
I think that there should be a mandatory charge, even if it's 1p on a bag. Kwik Save used to do it and some shops, such as Aldi, do it. The big supermarkets know that people can be petty enough to go elsewhere over such things; their customer perception is king over anything.
I have even seen an argument with someone who bought about £40 of stuff having to pay one pence for a bag. It is mad!
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Post by raspberrybullets on Jul 14, 2013 20:55:17 GMT
I think we pay 15 cents for a small bag and 20 cents for a big bag here. Something like that. They're good quality and last for ages so we reuse them heaps of times. Don't buy them often though as mostly we take a scrunch bag which is very handy for shopping.
I also reuse platic water bottles. I change them every now and then when they are getting too old. But I also just wash them and air them out. I had one of those platic gym drinking bottles that we got somewhere once and I thought that was smellier and grosser than a normal water bottle.
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Post by tangent on Jul 14, 2013 22:01:33 GMT
I'm against a charge for plastic bags. We don't throw away any of the free supermarket bags, we use them all to contain rubbish when we throw it away. If there were a charge for plastic bags, they would be stronger and we would necessarily be throwing away good plastic bags instead flimsy ones. We already have as many sturdy plastic bags as we need for the weekly shop but I purposely go to the supermarket during the week without a sturdy bag so that I can pick up a flimsy one to use for rubbish. The ones you buy specially for the job are very sturdy and therefore wasteful of oil.
I also think it's a false saving to recycle plastic bags. Our local council won't collect plastic bags separately from the ordinary rubbish because it is not economical. Moreover, I used to use more petrol driving to and from the nearest plastic bag recycling plant than can be recovered from recycling the bags. And even when plastic bags are recycled, they are made into useless garden ornaments that no one really needs and wouldn't exist if someone didn't try to make them out of recycled bags.
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Post by ProdigalAlan on Jul 14, 2013 22:28:41 GMT
I used to do most of my shopping in ASDA and I put all of my groceries back into the trolley when I had paid for them, I never bothered with bags, they just got lobbed the groceries into the back of the car and unloaded when I got home. This, I thought was a good thing, but no! Every time I got to the door at ASDA the security bod would demand to see my till receipt. Apparently not having your groceries in plastic bags was a sure sign you had been shoplifting.
I do most of my shopping in Aldi now, their fresh veg is better and cheaper than anywhere else and their booze is so godawful I'm not tempted to buy any, oh yeah and their chickens are really good and very cheap, plus if you listen to the other shoppers you find out what will be on Jeremy Kyle next week, as they all appear to have either been on it or are going to appear on it.
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Post by Alvamiga on Jul 15, 2013 8:21:53 GMT
Obviously round Tangent's way, the shops do not care much, as there are recycling facilities at the supermarkets here. I have never used them as I get through so few carrier bags that it's not worth it (I do use the few I get for the small bins in the house, which rarely need emptying as very little gets put in them and it's not the kind of stuff that rots or smells). When I go to the shop, I use cloth bags that I have been reusing for many years. For my own shopping, I only use about 5-10 in an entire year. The only bags I use with any frequency are for Honey when we go out and those are biodegradable. Tangent: Where did you get the idea that they only make garden ornaments from them?!? m.wisegeek.com/what-happens-to-recycled-plastic-bags.htm
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Post by Mari on Jul 15, 2013 8:51:15 GMT
I have to put plastic things in a different bin. We have bins here for paper, plastic, organic + regular waste (for some reason they don't separate that here anymore which I think is bad), glass + tins + juice packaging (with that silver looking lining to keep the contents fresh).
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Post by tangent on Jul 15, 2013 9:29:10 GMT
Obviously round Tangent's way, the shops do not care much, as there are recycling facilities at the supermarkets here. I have never used them as I get through so few carrier bags that it's not worth it (I do use the few I get for the small bins in the house, which rarely need emptying as very little gets put in them and it's not the kind of stuff that rots or smells). When I go to the shop, I use cloth bags that I have been reusing for many years. For my own shopping, I only use about 5-10 in an entire year. The only bags I use with any frequency are for Honey when we go out and those are biodegradable. Tangent: Where did you get the idea that they only make garden ornaments from them?!? m.wisegeek.com/what-happens-to-recycled-plastic-bags.htmIt's the council that doesn't care, not the supermarkets. The supermarkets have recycling bins but only for rubbish that the council will accept. And that doesn't include plastic bags. Yes, I understand about composite lumber but I'm sceptical that it is used for useful objects because of its strength and other properties. I've seen garden ornaments made out of it and wouldn't buy it because it looks horrible.
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Post by ProdigalAlan on Jul 15, 2013 10:08:27 GMT
I always admired other countries in the EU who had rubbish bins sectioned off for different kinds of waste. Here the rubbish bins in public places are just that, one big bin that contains everything. I do think our local councils could get their acts together, more like they do on the mainland of Europe
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Post by Miisa on Jul 15, 2013 10:21:12 GMT
My building has paper, organic, cardboard (including milk and juice cartons) and general, and when I drive to the shops or somewhere they also have batteries, metal and glass, and a few times a year they go around collecting electronic and other problem waste.
My big peeve is that they don't do plastic anywhere, it goes in general (which is, however, burnt for energy). But there isn't very much plastic anyway, as all bottles and cans of potables are deposit.
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Post by JoeP on Jul 15, 2013 10:56:43 GMT
I always admired other countries in the EU who had rubbish bins sectioned off for different kinds of waste. Here the rubbish bins in public places are just that, one big bin that contains everything. I do think our local councils could get their acts together, more like they do on the mainland of Europe Lots of areas in London - boroughs of Barnet and Camden at least - have 3 or 4 separate recycling bins where they have any. I admit it does vary by region though.
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Post by jayme on Jul 15, 2013 11:16:44 GMT
Yes, I understand about composite lumber but I'm sceptical that it is used for useful objects because of its strength and other properties. I've seen garden ornaments made out of it and wouldn't buy it because it looks horrible. My brother works at a factory that turns plastic bags and sawdust into composite lumber. It is mostly used to build decks.
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Post by tangent on Jul 15, 2013 11:46:21 GMT
OK, I withdraw my objection to plastic bag recycling.
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bill
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Post by bill on Jul 15, 2013 19:51:46 GMT
I have not seen any outlet anywhere for plastic bag recycling. This is actually one of my beefs. Every local authority seems to have a different system for recycling, even neighbouring boroughs. Why on earth can't they get their heads together and come up with a unified system for the whole of the country?
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Post by Alvamiga on Jul 15, 2013 22:30:11 GMT
You answered your own question there by referring to government and the word "unified" in the same post! If things were unified then local authorities could not be blamed for things not working.
I know this sounds cynical but, from my experience of working with many councils throughout the country, government is totally disorganised, wasteful and an utter shambles.
In Reading, we actually have bins that have separate openings for bottles, cans, paper and plastics. Not everywhere, but there is at least one near me, about 2.5 miles from the town centre.
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Post by tangent on Jul 16, 2013 9:58:55 GMT
We have separate bins for paper, bottles and cans. The supermarket also has bins for shoes.
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