More doom and gloom

[GarethM]

18 minutes ago, Mr. Ed said:

I don’t know if this thread is still live, so ignore me if it isn’t: I’ve never heard this about green glass.  Can you expand on it? 

Think of it as a bigger scale, but national milk bottle scheme.

 

You reduce the variety of types, they get washed and reused upto around 20x usually with deposit scheme, maybe even have the same brown colour for everything including milk ?.

 

Most recycling, is just pointless virtue signalling segregation especially plastics, the more you realise it's window dressing and incineration seems the best solution at source than export.

 

Maybe get Drax to take it after every recycling centre shreds it and makes it into pellets, I'd rather it was burnt here than some landfill in china or wherever.

[Steven P]

There is some merit to this, most plastics made from oil, the oil could just as easily be diverted into the power station instead of making plastic. So all we are doing there is using the oil before it is converted to electricity, and the big power stations can have industrial filtration and cleaning on the chimneys, carbon capture and so on. However I'd only advocate that when the plastic gets to the end of its useful life rather than a 2 shot use - plastic bag, burn it. It saves creating huge landfills which are just methane machines - methane is worse than Carbon Dioxide.

 

 

Colouring of stuff... it has been a thought of mine for a few years that anything that is not easily recyclable is coloured magenta (pink-purple) in the shops. All branding gone, just a pink box with the product name on. Manufacturers will change what they use but for me, as a consumer we'd only need 2 bins: dry waste and wet waste, no thought needed. In the recycling centre anything pink is dumped / burnt whatever, and everything else is recycled. All wet waste (food scraps etc) can be composted / methane digesters / whatever.

 

Similar to the bottle ideas above, all I'd want to do is take bottles to recycle with no thought needed if it is good to recycle or not.

[Mr. Ed]

4 hours ago, GarethM said:

Think of it as a bigger scale, but national milk bottle scheme.

 

You reduce the variety of types, they get washed and reused upto around 20x usually with deposit scheme, maybe even have the same brown colour for everything including milk ?.

 

Most recycling, is just pointless virtue signalling segregation especially plastics, the more you realise it's window dressing and incineration seems the best solution at source than export.

 

Maybe get Drax to take it after every recycling centre shreds it and makes it into pellets, I'd rather it was burnt here than some landfill in china or wherever.

Thanks Gareth. Could you point me at a source that says that most green glass doesn’t get recycled as glass? I’ve not found one. Only curious, not questioning. 

[GarethM]

10 minutes ago, Mr. Ed said:

Thanks Gareth. Could you point me at a source that says that most green glass doesn’t get recycled as glass? I’ve not found one. Only curious, not questioning. 

I'd have to have a long look, but it's effectively down to contamination with other colour glass, as once mixed say brown and green can't be isolated or removed so gets crushed for road base.

 

Plus i might have had the conversation with a guy from tarmac at some point about it too.

Edited March 17 by GarethM

[Botty Cough]

2 hours ago, GarethM said:

I'd have to have a long look, but it's effectively down to contamination with other colour glass, as once mixed say brown and green can't be isolated or removed so gets crushed for road base.

 

Plus i might have had the conversation with a guy from tarmac at some point about it too.

Yeah

Was in the quarry recently clearing the uplift trails of vegetation and noticed a huge pile of mixed colour crushed glass they chuck into the tarmac presumably.

 

[Steven P]

It -can- be recycled but needs to be separated into each colour, I don't think you can remove the colour from glass. Melt 2 or more colours together and you get a sort of attractive grey sludge colour - not so good for foods, but I guess might work for other things./

 

Once the glass is smashed the cost to recycle increases and might not be economical to separate broken glass - small pieces especially.

[Botty Cough]

2 minutes ago, Steven P said:

It -can- be recycled but needs to be separated into each colour, I don't think you can remove the colour from glass. Melt 2 or more colours together and you get a sort of attractive grey sludge colour - not so good for foods, but I guess might work for other things./

 

Once the glass is smashed the cost to recycle increases and might not be economical to separate broken glass - small pieces especially.

The quarry where they make tarmac get bonus points for mixing in recycled glass to the stuff they sell.

More green targets being fudged no doubt.

[GarethM]

Just now, Botty Cough said:

The quarry where they make tarmac get bonus points for mixing in recycled glass to the stuff they sell.

More green targets being fudged no doubt.

Bit like cement, we've reduced the co2 to make it.

 

Yeah by burning car tyres, which I'm not against for the record. Whilst at the same time you're wondering wtf weren't they doing that for decades as it's a fuel they actually get paid to take and use!.

[Botty Cough]

2 minutes ago, GarethM said:

Bit like cement, we've reduced the co2 to make it.

 

Yeah by burning car tyres, which I'm not against for the record. Whilst at the same time you're wondering wtf weren't they doing that for decades as it's a fuel they actually get paid to take and use!.

At the scrappers they shred the tyres and collect up the metal now.

The black stuff goes for reuse too.

I also wonder what gets recycled and what is actually dumped in tarmac mixes etc.

 

I have seen the council recycling collections get tipped in the landfill while working in the quarry too.

Was clearing off cliff faces at the time...😳

 

[GarethM]

7 minutes ago, Botty Cough said:

At the scrappers they shred the tyres and collect up the metal now.

The black stuff goes for reuse too.

I also wonder what gets recycled and what is actually dumped in tarmac mixes etc.

 

I have seen the council recycling collections get tipped in the landfill while working in the quarry too.

Was clearing off cliff faces at the time...😳

I did see a documentary about landfill where they had sealed them in the 80s, nothing has rotted. If it was all getting incinerated I'd say let them re open and burn the lot, salvage the metal and glass from the ash.

 

It was a proper documentary, not Dave and his VHS camera.

Edited March 17 by GarethM