On Fri, 24 Jan 2020 10:09:15 -0800 (PST), wrote:

snip


If there is a
facility that disposes of it in a less environmentally damaging way,
then you should make reasonable efforts to do that.

reasonable is the key word there. A crisp packet is of such low value that spending time washing them is entirely unreasonable.

*A* crisp packet maybe, but it doesn't take long to combine it with
many others.

Burying them in landfill is not damaging, dropping them on the beach is.

Assuming they make it to landfill, as you say, and don't end up
everywhere else.

You chose to buy / take / eat it, you then have to dispose of it
properly.

Now, if you can't engineer it to say drop a wodge of crisp packets
into a local drop off point, as part of your normal journey then maybe
you shouldn't buy them in the first place.

complete nonsequitur.

Only to you.

You're virtue-fying something of near zero value.

It's nothing to do with any 'value'.

If everyone took crisp packets to a dedicated recycler the world would be worse off, not better.

BS.

Time

'Time' maintaining the planet?

energy

When passing?

& money would have been misspent achieving a purely trivial benefit.

Trivial to you I'm guessing. It's not trivial to me, my family or any
of the thousands (millions?) of people who are 'bothering.

If you aren't part of the solution you are part of the problem.


The various governments are now making manufacturers factor the
efficient disposal / recycling into their products and some are
obliged to accept products back when we have finished with them (a
feature we have already paid for of course).

See, for too long (since we were all generally well off) we have been
buying stuff with no regard what will happen to it when we are
finished with it and many have been happy to just 'throw stuff away'
when often there isn't such a place. So that means stuff has to be
stored (tyres / fridges), burned or buried in a hole in the ground,
all of which have come back to haunt us.

very little needs to be stored,

I didn't say it needs to be stored, I said it is being stored
*because* there isn't yet a sufficient need or efficient system for
dealing with them in the quantities they are getting.

nuclear waste is the main example. But even what little of that I produce doesn't need storing. Burned & buried is not haunting us.

Of course they are. Burning increases pollution and global warming
gasses (even if it does recoup some of the energy) and burying
requires space and resources and can have negative side effects
(chemical leaching into groundwater and explosive gas buildup), not to
mention the locking away of resources that may one day be more
valuable than the houses they have built on them.


What would be better is to not buy the thing in the first place,
repair it if it goes wrong, re-purpose it into something else / useful
or recycle it in it's core components (so it can be recycled more
efficiently).

In many cases sure. Also in many cases not.

ATM.

Society is grossly wasteful, but many things really are not worth repairing, repurposing etc.

'Worth' again and by whose standards?

I took an otherwise written-off washing machine that wasn't
economically repairable (by conventional means) and repaired it and it
lasted another 8 years.

You may throw away something that someone else would repair, keep and
use.

And we can consider how recyclable a single use
container might be when we buy something.

Like, you can buy dog food dried in bulk, wet in tins or wet in
plastic pouches. From a quantity and recyclability POV, the plastic
pouches are worse than the tins and large paper sacks.


It's not inherently wrong to bury waste.

That can very much depend on the waste.

In many cases it's currently our best option.

Ah, and that is another topic. ;-)

It takes 'people' to push for change and we hear today that Tesco are
no longer using / selling plastic wrapped multipacks. Once the big
outlets like Tesco stop using such, the manufacturers will stop doing
it and so stop offering it to the other supermarkets.

Sainsbury's sell reusable net bags for you to put / weigh your own
loose produce in. Once people get use to that I dare say they will
stop supplying any fruit / veg in plastic bags, in the way they have
by charging for carrier bags.

Foiled plastic pouches use far less material per 4 pouches than 1 metal tin.

Maybe, but if it takes 6 x the energy to recycle the foil pouches (and
we should till be build a catapult big enough to launch such waste
into the sun g) then the tin wins.

And there are other differences that far outweigh that issue.

Such as?

I'm all for better handling of the waste stream, I think what we do now is lousy, but so many people prioritise trivial waste matters far above their real worth, and that is a pointless cost, not a virtue.

I'm sure they will / do, but something is better than nothing, even if
it's not the best thing, as long as it's done correctly.

It is so easy to increase recycling rate that with all the talk about it I have to wonder exactly why it's not being done.

Because of the same thing that fuels most of the issues we suffer as a
society, greed, ignorance and selfishness.

Does someone have zero brains, or does no-one even care?

I'm sure a bit of both, but many people do care, even if they don't
have the brains or skills to find out what's the best thing for
themselves.

Our Council gives out very clear leaflets (though every door)
describing in simple terms what things are wanted in the recycling
bins, what things aren't and how to process them.

I would say at least 50% of the bins we pass when walking the dog in
some way fall foul of the 'rules' and so either don't get collected or
contaminate / de-value the waste stream.

As you ask, are these people actually thick? Are we asking too much of
them with the instruction, 'Take the top off the milk bottle before
putting it in the recycling box', or 'flatten all cardboard boxes' ...
because these people simply can't understand *why* they have been
requested so? Or is it they CBA to take the responsibility for their
own waste in a way that allows the council to keep their rates down?

Maybe schools should dump religious education and replace them with
classes on *Why* we all need to be a good citizens?

Cheers, T i m