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Phil Bradshaw

wrote:

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,
- 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.

At present the nation is expected to put a sizeable amount of hours
each week into rubbish sorting at home, for free,

Em. It doesn't take long to separate waste at domestic level especially if
said waste is limited by avoiding taking home too much in the first place.

when the companies
that get the sorted goods should be responsible for this.

And will pay (far less) for mixed feed stock accordingly. Or go elsewhere.

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.

If rubbish comes 'mixed' then yes: diminishing returns kick in.

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.

Take 10 busted metric pallets, dismantle same, build (a) 1 compost bin of ~1
cu metre capacity to suit available space, (b) temporary storage shelving
to tidy up the workshop and (c) have enough boards left to make a cold
frame using glass from a scrap double-glazed door.

:-)