Plastic Ban

Put my hand up - I use straws and cotton buds so why should they be phased out because some dispose of them irresponsibly? I recycle where I can, stupidly taking the tops off bottles and saving them for the tip as hard plastic.

One anomaly seems to be expanded polystyrene. Does not get recycled, as far as I know, and probably is considered unimportant because it is less dense (light) and landfill is measured in tonnes. Will this stuff eventually cover the planet? Perhaps it can be burnt?

I went into a local supermarket to buy lemonade - just one type available - but next to 15 different types of water. What's that all about? Surely there is only a need for still and fizzy?
If I had told my grandad that people would pay a quid for a bottle of water it would have shortened his life - by dying of laughter and amazement!

We recycled polystyrene into filling for kids toys for a while until we could make a cardboard pack.

Ecofriendly food wrap has been used for aeons in the form of banana leaves which are not edible and cabbage which is.

Buy 100 packets, bar your wife from touching them (if you have a wife) and you have got life long supply. They are cheap enough.

Martin

What happened to string bags? Last for years, keep in a pocket, make your own instead of knitting wooly hats.

It annoys me that councils have different policies for disposal, the colour of the bin you use for the rubbish varies, my son lives 5 miles outside town, in a different council area, and the non recyclable bin is a different colour to ours, yet our council empties them! Daughter lives in Yorkshire, different again, and when we go to a holiday let in Dorset it is at least the same colour for non recyclables.

We cannot put waxed cartons in our recyclable bin, but when you go to the local tip/dump, sorry recycling centre there is a container for them!

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If I remember rightly there is legislation in Germany that prevents the use of expanded polystyrene as packaging material and also its importation as packaging on products, my grey cells may be playing tricks on me but I remember it being an issue when a company I worked for exported to Germany.

Dave W

In the seventies (I was young) and used to follow the GP and formula 1 races around Europe. This meant many trips on the cross channel ferries, and I always remember being horrified to see , as two ferries passed mid channel, the stewards emptying all the kitchen and restaurant debris in the drink from the back of the ferry! We should stop making ANYTHING that is "disposable" and instead it should be made illegal to make anything that is not recyclable, and also mandate that recyclable products MUST be recycled. This is not a simple thing however as the energy demand to recycle is often more than is required to manufacture from new raw materials. Virtually all plastics can be recycled into something, but most are not as it simply is not profitable. I have used recycled plastic post and rail fencing, which never rots, never needs painting, and is virtually indistinguishable from wood, the only problem is, it's more expensive than wood! make it cheaper, and every fencing contractor would beat a path to your door, and the incentive to recycle would benefit too. It would be better for local authorities to give away raw materials like polythenes for recycling than put them in landfill. I notice that my local CA site, having had an on/off thing about hard plastics for a few years, now has a permanent hard plastics skip, which is nearly always full, so that must be going for recycling. This has become a major ecological problem, and it needs innovation and cheap energy to tackle it effectively. but tackle it we must!

Plastic fence will break up in a storm in 15 years when the plasticiser has ebbed away. At least my oak fence could still be used as kindling when 50 years had taken its toll. Safe to burn as oak didn't need treating. Loads of plastic guttering being used, and the rest of the trim, which I think builder would be prepared to pay extra for because the builders know they get the chance to redo it soon enough.

Councils use different bin colours to stop people stealing them to sell to a property developer in another police area. Locally the link would be observed, some distance would cost the thieves too much, so it becomes safe to reuse the style.

Interesting thread. It does seem there are many different policies about how to deal with plastic, but it seems to me that the sheer scale of the problem is an issue. I appreciate that action has to start somewhere, so any local or national action has to be a step forward, but I would think there needs to be international pressure.

I live in eastern europe (about 10 years now), and it is clear there is a major attitude difference here: rubbish can be and is dumped anywhere - there is no education or information about the damage this causes. Although countries like the UK may be taking steps to curtail single-use plastic, such as PET bottles, the manufacturers are increasing their use of them in other countries. Drinkable water is a luxury here, so literally tons of bottled water is sold every day - all in PET bottles. Companies churn out cola, sticky 'fruit' drinks, in fact anything which will go into a bottle, goes into a PET bottle - and its no exaggeration to say most of these end up thrown to the side of the road here. (Rubbish collection is also almost unknown).

We have about 5 acres of land in a remote, rural part of the country, close to a small village of about 800 people. The only 'industry' around here is illegally cutting oak and ash in the State Forest, for shipping to Austria and Hungary. When we bought the land; we spent about a week collecting and removing plastic rubbish left on the land by these wood thieves. About 75% was old PET bottles. We eventually collected 5 full loads in a 1-ton trailer. (I don't have space to tell the story of the trouble it took to get rid of them).

Another point I would like to make: has anyone ever looked at the production of childrens toys? - almost all plastic these days. Not a bad thing that Toys'R Us went bust.

OK - rant over - just wanted to make a point about the scale of the problem

Hi, I also live in EE (Poland) for sometime and in our local area they have a nice recycling policy.

Local authorities are encouraging residents to segregate plastic by offering 50% discount for refuge collection.

Many of residents are doing it. Then bin men are coming and taking segregated bin only to mix them in the landfill again. Local chancellor is officially happy because EU quotas are satisfied and authority does not pay fines for underrecycling but in private she would admit that entire exercise is a nonsense. There are some hopes that we will be sending it to Ukraine where it is used as a fuel. These are good news but not for Ukraine.

Martin

Hi, Martin,

It sounds as if both our countries have the same problem. Our local council installed large 'wheelie' bins in wire-fenced compounds around the local villages, in an attempt to solve the 'non-rubbish collection' problem. First thing that happened was the wire fencing around the compounds was stolen!

Next most of the plastic wheelie bins disappeared - turned out they were stolen by locals to put rubbish in! No action was ever taken, and no missing bins replaced.

Then the few remaining wheelie bins gradually disappeared under mountains of rubbish. It turned out the council had never arranged any method of emptying them!

This led to complaints from people living near the compounds (who were probably the major users of them), so the councils solution was to remove the bins completely and dismantle the compounds - but they simply left the piles of rubbish where they lay - ain't diversity wonderful?

NEWS:

**LINK**

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180426141530.htm

MichaelG.

Mick Charity, How am I part of the problem?, it is very unlikely that my fence will end up in the sea, it has been up more than 15 years and still seems perfect, and the only point in recycling plastic is to use it for another purpose. If you are going to make a ridiculous statement like "you are part of the problem" please try to form and post logical argument as to why this is so!

Very interesting research, Michael, thank you for the link.

if they can jump to up-scaling the processes of producing/recycling then any cost differentials could be overcome by legislating.
DaveD

Isnt all this fuss about the dumping of the recycled plastics in to the ocean.

Rather than cure the problem its Joe public that pays the price, same with emissions on cars.

Sorry but I tend to agree with Mick Charity on this one.

If wood is not recycled it will break down in time & go back into the earth. It is part of nature's cycle ( Not the paint I accept). It is a natural product that can be produced in large quantities. Your plastic needs significant energy to produce (as an aside, does it also use oil in the production process? I am not sure!!) & will, contrary to what you infer, be a real pain to dispose of & in spite of your comment will probably end up in landfill anyway. In most cases one may be deluding one's self about recycling such products & I tend to wonder how much is, truthfully, being recycled.

Edited By Sam Longley 1 on 29/04/2018 07:07:59

I hope this doesn't include the jolly useful plastic straw that comes with the various spray cans of lubricants, solvents and snake oil that I enjoy so much...

...and what about that toy at the far end of my workshop that I have been tarting up, on and off, for the past few years? Are thety going to ban toys?

Better hope the switches dont break Robin.
Settled in yet need another repair on Combro.

Switches? Which switches? Am I expecting problems with switches? It has momentary switches, click on/click off switches, microswitches, proximity switches, thermal switches and hydraulic switches. Could you be more specific?

Italso has a card full of relays which confused me momentarily. When I drew the circuit it turned out that they were latching relays for the guards. The idea being that a guard could switch enough current to hold the relay but not enough to pull it in. I had to change a lot of relays before that bit worked

From National Geographic, in today's News: **LINK**

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/05/plastic-bag-mariana-trench-pollution-science-spd/

MichaelG.