Recycling rubbish is a great ideal but a total pain in the neck to implement. The complications of sorting rubbish mean it all makes a horrible mess and you need a shed to accommodate the various bins! It is also expensive to collect and process. After all that, councils struggle to find anyone to recycle the stuff. Much of it used to go to China on ships that had delivered Chinese goods to us, but we buy less from China these days so there are fewer empty ships ready to take it. We don't recycle much in this country because actually it is often cheaper to make tings from scratch. Anyway, we no longer have much of a manufacturing industry (now that does warrant a rant!). I, of course, am the best person to advise the government on these matters and would tell them that the real answer is to provide far less packaging and to nake it all recyclable.
Hi GG and Chica, Ah yes packaging, ? I remember many years ago going to the local butchers, mam selecting her choice of meat and getting the butcher to mince it (no horse meat) and then going to the Grocery shop with her carry all bag she would get a stone of spuds some carrots and what ever vegetable that was in season there was also the local slop man who would come around once a week for to collect kitchen scraps to feed his pigs ,the paper packaging used to be kept for lighting the fire in the mornings and ashes used in the garden also when the chimney was swept the soot was plied for 6 months before digging in to the veg patch now that's recycling now because of E U rules the farmer has to buy feed that may or may not have animal bits in it ,Cows were fed meal some years ago which was contaminated result BSE ,.You know you could go on and on ,. My haven't we all advanced since the War .
We're all much bigger than consumers than we were then, of course. When I was a kid, around 1950, my dad had two suits. That's all, apart from the underwear and shirts to go with them. I don't even remember him wearing a sweater. The suits weren't washable, which boggles the mind a bit.
There wasn't any spare money and we lived simply. There were three cars in our entire street and one television - ours, bought for the coronation.
When you compare that with today's consumption, its no surprise that there's a bigger problem with recycling.
i also remember the time when all seven of us would rush out in the street to watch the chimney sweeps brush come of the chimney.playing skipping with muvers washing line,knocking on street doors and running away,nicking flowers out of gardens and giving them to me mum.only to get a clip round the earhole for pinching them.oh well times have changed
I disagree G/G we are not bigger consumers in lots of things we do expect things to come clean wrapped and all looking the same, well some do. I go to the farm shop and fill a bag with veg, none of it wrapped some still has the soil on, how could you do that in a supermarket? My local butcher will wrap the individual meats I buy in a single sheet of paper and it all goes in one box, again you could not do that in the big shops. As to recycle we separate paper tins bottles plastic and just plain rubbish plus of course the green waste which will start soon, we then find the recycle people send some to land fill and some to burn as they cannot get rid of it. I do re-use lots of stuff and make my own compost although a lot will go to Green waste, pots are used and re-washed for years, some of the large ones get a coat of paint and used again although it is all a drop in the ocean and will solve nothing until packaging is reduced. Even wartime recycling turned out to be a bit of a con, iron railings dismantled then left in scrap yards until the end of the war then sold back to people, aluminium pans turned out to be the wrong kind of scrap for planes, paper was turned into briquettes and sold as fuel, we never win, why do we keep trying I ask.
I think that in the long run there will be stricter rules about packaging and only reusable materials will be allowed. In time, uses will be found for the materials we now struggle to recycle. For example, I heard on the radio a few years back that bricks can now be made of plastic suitable to build houses, durable and fireproof. No-one does it, but it could come. I'm no blind optimist, but necessity is the mother of invention and we have to learn a more sustainable lifestyle. Also, frightening though the thought is, it is possible that the west is in permanent economic decline and will be overtaken by eastern countries where wages are lower and industry still flourishes. If so, we'll all be more careful with what we waste!
I live in Dordogne (beginning to sound like a recording, I've said that so often!) and we are provided with yellow 50L bin bags to put all our packaging materials into, drink cartons, plastic bottles, paper, tins, bubble plastic packaging, yoghurt pots etc. It's so easy, don't even have to sort it out. Only problem is I live about 3 miles from nearest village so I have to take all my rubbish to the big bins near the village, but it's worth it for the service.
Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
Hi Busy-Lizzie. I've been admiring your garden on another thread. I've spent some time in the western Loire where my brother in law has a cottage and have fantasised about living there. How are you enjoying living in France? Have you found that the cost of living has risen a lot since the exchange rates changed so much?
Gardening Grandma if only but economics do not work predictably. At Wilton over the River from us is a brand new plant for the recycling of plastic milk bottles, it has been open a year and is now being moth balled as not enough milk bottles to salvage?? On the same site once ICI's largest plant now long gone they are building power stations to run on Gas, Green waste and specially grown brushwood, that is grown on fields that could produce food. It must be economically viable more than probably with all those green taxes we are paying so we can run out of proper power stations in four years time. China and South East Asia are at the moment running fast although the time will come when they want wages to buy all the things we take for granted, as the world turns so it will become cheaper to manufacture in Europe and full circle. This area still has a good manufacturing base mainly because we were still making things long after other parts of the country, when we do lose those skills then it will be back to the stone age and my woad will be colour of the month once more.
Posts
Recycling rubbish is a great ideal but a total pain in the neck to implement. The complications of sorting rubbish mean it all makes a horrible mess and you need a shed to accommodate the various bins! It is also expensive to collect and process. After all that, councils struggle to find anyone to recycle the stuff. Much of it used to go to China on ships that had delivered Chinese goods to us, but we buy less from China these days so there are fewer empty ships ready to take it. We don't recycle much in this country because actually it is often cheaper to make tings from scratch. Anyway, we no longer have much of a manufacturing industry (now that does warrant a rant!). I, of course, am the best person to advise the government on these matters
and would tell them that the real answer is to provide far less packaging and to nake it all recyclable.
why oh why do they put bananas in a plastic bag,i take the bag off at the checkout and say you can have this as i dont need it.if looks could kill.
Hi GG and Chica, Ah yes packaging, ? I remember many years ago going to the local butchers, mam selecting her choice of meat and getting the butcher to mince it (no horse meat) and then going to the Grocery shop with her carry all bag she would get a stone of spuds some carrots and what ever vegetable that was in season there was also the local slop man who would come around once a week for to collect kitchen scraps to feed his pigs ,the paper packaging used to be kept for lighting the fire in the mornings and ashes used in the garden also when the chimney was swept the soot was plied for 6 months before digging in to the veg patch now that's recycling now because of E U rules the farmer has to buy feed that may or may not have animal bits in it ,Cows were fed meal some years ago which was contaminated result BSE ,.You know you could go on and on ,. My haven't we all advanced since the War .
Derek
We're all much bigger than consumers than we were then, of course. When I was a kid, around 1950, my dad had two suits. That's all, apart from the underwear and shirts to go with them. I don't even remember him wearing a sweater. The suits weren't washable, which boggles the mind a bit.
There wasn't any spare money and we lived simply. There were three cars in our entire street and one television - ours, bought for the coronation.
When you compare that with today's consumption, its no surprise that there's a bigger problem with recycling.
i also remember the time when all seven of us would rush out in the street to watch the chimney sweeps brush come of the chimney.playing skipping with muvers washing line,knocking on street doors and running away,nicking flowers out of gardens and giving them to me mum.only to get a clip round the earhole for pinching them.oh well times have changed
I disagree G/G we are not bigger consumers in lots of things we do expect things to come clean wrapped and all looking the same, well some do. I go to the farm shop and fill a bag with veg, none of it wrapped some still has the soil on, how could you do that in a supermarket?
My local butcher will wrap the individual meats I buy in a single sheet of paper and it all goes in one box, again you could not do that in the big shops.
As to recycle we separate paper tins bottles plastic and just plain rubbish plus of course the green waste which will start soon, we then find the recycle people send some to land fill and some to burn as they cannot get rid of it.
I do re-use lots of stuff and make my own compost although a lot will go to Green waste, pots are used and re-washed for years, some of the large ones get a coat of paint and used again although it is all a drop in the ocean and will solve nothing until packaging is reduced.
Even wartime recycling turned out to be a bit of a con, iron railings dismantled then left in scrap yards until the end of the war then sold back to people, aluminium pans turned out to be the wrong kind of scrap for planes, paper was turned into briquettes and sold as fuel, we never win, why do we keep trying I ask.
Frank
I think that in the long run there will be stricter rules about packaging and only reusable materials will be allowed. In time, uses will be found for the materials we now struggle to recycle. For example, I heard on the radio a few years back that bricks can now be made of plastic suitable to build houses, durable and fireproof. No-one does it, but it could come. I'm no blind optimist, but necessity is the mother of invention and we have to learn a more sustainable lifestyle. Also, frightening though the thought is, it is possible that the west is in permanent economic decline and will be overtaken by eastern countries where wages are lower and industry still flourishes. If so, we'll all be more careful with what we waste!
I live in Dordogne (beginning to sound like a recording, I've said that so often!) and we are provided with yellow 50L bin bags to put all our packaging materials into, drink cartons, plastic bottles, paper, tins, bubble plastic packaging, yoghurt pots etc. It's so easy, don't even have to sort it out. Only problem is I live about 3 miles from nearest village so I have to take all my rubbish to the big bins near the village, but it's worth it for the service.
Hi Busy-Lizzie. I've been admiring your garden on another thread. I've spent some time in the western Loire where my brother in law has a cottage and have fantasised about living there. How are you enjoying living in France? Have you found that the cost of living has risen a lot since the exchange rates changed so much?
Gardening Grandma if only but economics do not work predictably. At Wilton over the River from us is a brand new plant for the recycling of plastic milk bottles, it has been open a year and is now being moth balled as not enough milk bottles to salvage??
On the same site once ICI's largest plant now long gone they are building power stations to run on Gas, Green waste and specially grown brushwood, that is grown on fields that could produce food. It must be economically viable more than probably with all those green taxes we are paying so we can run out of proper power stations in four years time.
China and South East Asia are at the moment running fast although the time will come when they want wages to buy all the things we take for granted, as the world turns so it will become cheaper to manufacture in Europe and full circle.
This area still has a good manufacturing base mainly because we were still making things long after other parts of the country, when we do lose those skills then it will be back to the stone age and my woad will be colour of the month once more.
Frank.