DIYbanter - View Single Post - Rubbish disposal, government regs and local councils

In article ,
writes:
The whole recycling system is a joke.

A friend of mine used to do PAT testing for an organisation which
would try to recycle washing machines, fridges, freezers, etc which
people chuck out. They were collected up and where necessary repaired
using parts from other ones, and then tested and provided to people
who couldn't afford to buy such items themselves.

The EU recycling regs completely killed this recycling activity.
They inevitably produce a large amount of white goods waste (non-
repairable machines raided for parts), and the cost of dealing with
that would have required selling the repaired machines at near to
the new prices. The fact that they were actually reducing the amount
of waste by taking in more chucked-out machines than they produced
and recycling them was irrelevant.

The UK now produces so much recycled green glass that we sell the
excess to China.

The phrase "driving to the bottle bank" is commonly used as a
reference to the futility of some types of recycling. If you have
to drive to a bottle bank, it's more environmentally friendly to
drop the glass in your regular landfill rubbish.

--
Andrew Gabriel