On 02/01/2018 09:11, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Tue, 2 Jan 2018 00:19:10 -0800 (PST), harry
wrote:

S'obvious what the next move's gonna be.
They're gonna demand (more) money to take our plastic waste.
And have the option of refusing it if it's contaminated.

There's a big fuss ATM about plastics getting into the oceans and
harming sea life, from plankton to whales. People in the UK are
talking about reducing use of plastics in packaging etc. and some
places are even rejoicing in declaring themselves 'plastic free', or
whatever. How silly is all that? Apart from the fact that plastics,
especially plastic packaging, is an extremely useful and hygienic way
of presenting food etc, I read that 90% of the plastic waste in our
oceans comes from rivers in the Far East. http://bit.ly/2lC2qGR

AIUI, in the UK, plastic waste is either recycled, incinerated or sent
to landfill. How much of it actually ends up in the sea? I've no idea
but not much, I wouldn't think. So it seems to me that these campaigns
to reduce plastic packaging in the UK are typically misguided,
emotional, not thought through and probably 'green' ideas.

What I don't know is what happens to the plastic waste that gets
recycled. Clearly, from recent headlines about China not taking any
more of the stuff, a lot was actually exported and not recycled in the
UK. Which raises the question 'what happens to the exported stuff?' Is
a lot of it just dumped in the sea in the Far East, in which case
there is cause for concern, but it just means we should up our game
when it comes to recycling here in the UK, not blindly run campaigns
to reduce the use of plastics all together.

Agreed.

Everywhere seems to be different, but here in Gloucestershire we have
four streams: landfill, food waste, paper/cardboard, and tins+glass+
"bulk" plastic.

Food waste is new, this goes to a digester, I think. I read somewhere
that only paper/cardboard is an actual net earner, tins/glass/plastic is
just less expensive than landfill.

There is a big incinerator being built (with much public opposition).

Presumably tins easily go into iron and aluminium recycling. Glass is I
think crushed and put into building or road aggregate. No idea what they
currently do with plastic (send to China?) but could be incinerated and
potentially generate some electricity. PE and PP can go into low grade
structural stuff, I think PET can be turned into fleeces.