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John Beardmore

In message . com,
writes
Owain wrote:
Andy Hall wrote:

The question is whether it's one of the types of plastic that is
currently recycled in a particular area.
Fine. So if the local authority wants to differentiate over this issue,
it can get it's employees sifting through these bottle.

I don't see why they can't put people on 'community service' doing this
sort of thing.

Owain

Maybe because there are far more useful things to have convicts doing
than this. Labour is worth money.

If recycling of sorted goods is going to work, companies buying the
materials need to either:
- sort them, at their own cost,

So I want aluminium and I have to buy mixed waste ?

- or accept payments from customers willing to pay for their rubbish to
be sorted (this happens in the commercial/industrial garbage business)
- or accept ready sorted garbage from those customers wiling to spend
their valuable time sifting their garbage.

Well - it doesn't take long.

At present the nation is expected to put a sizeable amount of hours
each week into rubbish sorting at home, for free, when the companies
that get the sorted goods should be responsible for this.

Hours ?!?

If it really
were a good value thing to do with ones time, this would work fine
economically. The truth is it doesnt, it doesnt even begin to. Which
means rubbish sorting is a very poor value way to spend ones time and
labour.

Takes seconds round here !

This has a direct negative environmental impact, as those hours could
be spent doing something genuinely useful, some of which things would
inlude the things you want to see happen, such as installation of
insulation, solar hw, working in socially positive jobs and so on.

Works for us !

I think one of the things that Peter Harper at CAT said a few years ago
re waste separation was

"Quit while you're ahead !".

He explained this to mean

Separate everything that can quickly be separated.

Don't waste time on things with no residual value that nobody wants.

Works for me.

Cheers, J/.
--
John Beardmore