Recycling plastics

[redhed-2]

Hi all, so we have a box of food trays, mostly black ready meal type, seems like our local council doesn't accept them in with the blue recycling bin, as I am reluctant to throw them as I hate plastics going to landfill, does any one know of facilities or councils which do accept them in the north west? I have thought About putting them on free cycle I'm sure they could be put to some use...

[stroppy*cow]

Are any of your friends or neighbours keen on gardening - could they be used as seed trays?

[ed_blackadder_1]

Good idea Stroppy, our council take them now finally.

[captainbovine]

since our new bins have arrived, we can now recycle all plastic except bags. We can recycle all cardboard too but we have to separate white card from brown card...hhhmmm were do you put a piece of card that is brown on one side and white on another????

[bitsnknots]

Our recycling is done every week.  We have a black box for glass and cardboard, a pink bag for tins and plastic bottles and a blue bag for newspapers.  Our green bin is emptied once a fortnight and we have a brown bin for everything else.  The brown bin is emptied in the week that the green bin isn't.

[ed_blackadder_1]

I think it's brilliant, hardly anything goes in the bin now, they even take the plastic that cold meat comes in.

[bitsnknots]

The only plastics we can recycle are bottles for some reason.

[ed_blackadder_1]

So was ours until a month ago

[cookiecookuk]

ours changed about a month ago and we can now also put all plastic containers and glass

[bitsnknots]

We've been able to recycle glass since our council started with recycling but they are still only accepting plastic bottles for reasons only known to themselves.

[peteryola]

Interesting variety across the country there - down here we've been able to put all plastics in the recycling for about 2 years now, including expanded polystyrene.

[bankhaunter]

We have one bin for all recycling and a little geegaw to show how different types of waste should be dealt with.

I can't understand why it is that some of the powers that be don't realise making recycling complicated and difficult will simply put people off doing it.

[bitsnknots]

One of our neighbours certainly doesn't understand the art of recycling. She wondered why the council wouldn't empty her green bin when there was general waste in it.  

[malacandran]

The recycling of "plastic" has always struck me as dubious.

I mean, one can see that recycling glass might be possible.  So all glass bottles, tumblers, bowls, broken windows, and anything else made of glass, could be collected up.  Then put into a big furnace.  Which would melt the whole lot down to a mass of liquid glass.  From which new glass-based articles could be manufactured.

That seems at least plausible.  Though energy costs of collection, transportation, and reheating, make it seem economically unsound.

Unless driven by a Green agenda, where economics are less important than ideology!

The point is: glass is a very simple substance.-  just fused silica.  Whereas "plastics" are more complex.  It's true that they ultimately derive from hydrocarbon-based oil.  Yet even this oil, has a complex molecular structure, compared to simple glass.

So don't "plastic" products exist in too wide a range of varieties, to be economically recycled?

[jazzymazzy2015]

If I get any of these type of food trays I reuse them myself. I cook up big batches of bol,chilly, mince, etc and freeze them for another day. Good, home cooked food in convenient ready meals.

[redhed-2]

Yes, as I thought, where the recycling of plastics are involved, there does seem to be a disparity in services across the UK. I seem to be in an authority where the services are less comprehensive (the blue/ recycling bins we are provided with are quite limited in what can be put in them- no glass or brown paper) although looking around the area very few people seem to use them correctly, and collections seem quite unreliable hence the overflowing of bins

[malacandran]

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@redhed-2 wrote:
Yes, as I thought, where the recycling of plastics are involved, there does seem to be a disparity in services across the UK. I seem to be in an authority where the services are less comprehensive (the blue/ recycling bins we are provided with are quite limited in what can be put in them- no glass or brown paper) although looking around the area very few people seem to use them correctly, and collections seem quite unreliable hence the overflowing of bins

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Probably, most items don't actually get "recycled".  They just get dumped in a land-fill pit. 

Because as redhead points out, very few people use the bins correctly.

For example, here in Brighton, the bins outside my block of flats,  aren't in different colours. They're just big black skips.  

True, the skips do have labels on them. Which say things like "Please don't put plastic bags in here". But no-one takes any notice. The skips for Paper, Glass, Tin Cans etc, are stuffed full of miscellaneous items tightly wrapped in plastic supermarket bags.

How these items could possibly be sorted out at a recycling-centre,  is a mystery.  Anything encased in plastic, undoubtedly goes straight into land-fill.

[ilove2patch]

This is really interesting.:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IgOMpM2-os

[merc1_clocks]

That was really interesting indeed...I'm glad I watched it!

[malacandran]

The video was very interesting.  It shows people standing diligently at the fast-moving conveyor belt.  Deftly snatching off unsuitable shredded bits.  How they do it, seems admirable.  Such quickness of hand.  They must be motivated by a keen desire to re-cycle!

This is a revelation.  And I now realise I was quite wrong to think, that all the shredded bits actually go up the conveyor belt,  until they fall off the end, into a big skip.  Which is then carted away, and its contents emptied into a land-fill site.