Recycle! Positive Comments Welcome

[George.]

I honestly feel that if Coca Cola, and all the rest, place their products into millions of plastic bottles then, they should have to pay a levy for each bottle they use, and that the levy should then be used to properly dispose of the used items.  Start at the source/top, it's much more efficient !

Same for the massive amounts of coffee shops and their plastic cups and anyone else who contributes to "industrial scale" waste.

The money raised should then be used to set up proper recycling facilities and to try and educate the morons who seem to dump their rubbish anywhere and everywhere.

Nobody is perfect, Colin. Unfortunately, it is the common man that chucks his empty cans of Coca Cola anywhere and everywhere, not the man that got it ready to be marketed. Not just the cans but the bottles as well, regardless. Bottles of milk are plastic and have been for a while now. What is done about the plastic bottles of Shetland milk? An awful lot of it gets blown around Shetland before it lands in the Atlantic, and that doesn't happen until the common man has bought the plastic bottle of milk. Then the milk or juice, washing-up liquid, shampoo or a million and one other things is used and thrown away when the bottle is empty. The Scottish government has done what it can to try and recover the rubbish that Joe Public throws away willy nilly. Strange, because the farmer that bottles his milk never throws it all in the gutter when it's empty. It's the person that buys it that does that. Joe Public often does the same with every different plastic bottle that Tesco or whoever sells to the idiots that are too lazy.

 

Must think about where I can throw the empty plastic bottle of engine oil, because that's what the gallon of engine oil is now carried in,  now that half a gallon of it has been poured all over the engine and has then dripped all over the street, in the vain hope that half a pint will dribble into the sump. Just like cans and bottles of coke - and all the rest.

 

Does make me think about one thing that you mentioned, the fact that the manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers make no effort to recover the tins and bottles etc. Makes me wonder, how many purchasers would bother to take them back?

Edited August 29, 2018 by George.

[Ghostrider]

Then there's this.....

 

http://www.shetnews.co.uk/news/16882-sic-to-spend-extra-264-000-on-recycling-facility

 

In the space of a year a tin shed and a conveyor belt and a baler or so have increased in cost by over 25%. (The probability it'll be at least 50% over budget by the time its finished, just like most SIC jobs, we'll leave to another day).

 

So, what got us here, poorly estimated/costed in the report last July? Purposely understated in the July '17 report, so as make it a more (hopefully) palatable amount for Councillors/the public to swallow, and sneak the rest in 'later' in equally (hopefully) palatable increments, after a 'dignified' amount of time passes.....like now?

 

Surely not........There must be a far more regular and mundane 'explanation'...... right!?!

 

Pile of shi........'rubbish'. The lot of it.

Edited August 29, 2018 by Ghostrider

[Nigel Bridgman-Elliot]

> deposit return system
 

Having experienced that elsewhere, it worked wonderfully well, even with empty crisp packets !

Make it pay enough and folk will go around making sure there is no rubbish left !

 

We might even have to start locking up our bins..

[Nigel Bridgman-Elliot]

> There must be a far more regular and mundane 'explanation'.

 

I'm sure if there is one, someone will no doubt mention it in public so we are all kept up to speed on the issue.

 

I think they call it PR or something like that.

 

 

We might even be able to help out, if somehow they are being overcharged for something that one of us happens to know where they can get it cheaper, as I know how overstreached purchasing departments in the civil service/etc. can be, they need every helping hand they can get to cut costs.
 

[admin]

From Shetland News > Recycling picks up steam but isles still lag below average

[Suffererof1crankymofo]

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the developed world where things aren't so backwards, an island resort has been created from the ash from an incinerator and it doubles as a nature park.  It's a tourist attraction just off Singapore.  Singapore reports that they still have a problem with plastics due to the increased use.  Other countries outside the EU are also using incinerators.

 

Want to curb the use of plastics?  Don't recycle them but force manufacturers to use other packaging materials.

[Ghostrider]

SIBC headline....

 

 

Of all the waste in Shetland only 22 per cent goes to landfill, the second best of all 32 local authority areas of Scotland, and half the percentage for the whole of Scotland, which is 45 per cent.

 

So, we're second from the top of the table for least waste going in to landfill, but apparently we're also high on the league table for not 'recycling'.

 

A rather curious anomaly that..... We don't landfill it, but we don't recycle it, so what do we do with it.

 

Oh, yeah. We 'recycle' it in to used heat, but Holyrood doesn't have a box to tick for that scenario. So, instead of creating a box and ticking it, we have to change our 'recycling' method from one that makes sense and does work for our circumstances, to a complete waste of time and resources so that we can tick one of the 'recycle' boxes they do have, regardless if it consumes a considerable additional un-necessary amount of non-renewable resources to achieve.

 

Holyrood 'one-size-fits-all' - 1.

 

Island proofing & common sense - 0.

[Colin]

"Want to curb the use of plastics?  Don't recycle them but force manufacturers to use other packaging materials."

 

How about just leaving the oil where it is ?

 

Seems to me that, once extracted, the "genie is out of the bottle" and, you can't get it back in.

[Capeesh]

SIBC headline....

 

 

 

 

 

Of all the waste in Shetland only 22 per cent goes to landfill, the second best of all 32 local authority areas of Scotland, and half the percentage for the whole of Scotland, which is 45 per cent.

 

So, we're second from the top of the table for least waste going in to landfill, but apparently we're also high on the league table for not 'recycling'.

 

A rather curious anomaly that..... We don't landfill it, but we don't recycle it, so what do we do with it.

 

Oh, yeah. We 'recycle' it in to used heat, but Holyrood doesn't have a box to tick for that scenario. So, instead of creating a box and ticking it, we have to change our 'recycling' method from one that makes sense and does work for our circumstances, to a complete waste of time and resources so that we can tick one of the 'recycle' boxes they do have, regardless if it consumes a considerable additional un-necessary amount of non-renewable resources to achieve.

 

Holyrood 'one-size-fits-all' - 1.

 

Island proofing & common sense - 0.

Burning waste in an incinerator isn't classed as recycling even though it produces energy. It's got nothing to do with Holyrood box ticking.

Some experts say the increased use of market-driven incinerators that constantly need to be fed have a negative effect on the amount of waste getting recycled.

Edited September 26, 2018 by Capeesh

[Guest PJS1979]

Why aren't the businesses recycling ?

[Ghostrider]

 

SIBC headline....

 

 

 

Of all the waste in Shetland only 22 per cent goes to landfill, the second best of all 32 local authority areas of Scotland, and half the percentage for the whole of Scotland, which is 45 per cent.

So, we're second from the top of the table for least waste going in to landfill, but apparently we're also high on the league table for not 'recycling'.

 

A rather curious anomaly that..... We don't landfill it, but we don't recycle it, so what do we do with it.

 

Oh, yeah. We 'recycle' it in to used heat, but Holyrood doesn't have a box to tick for that scenario. So, instead of creating a box and ticking it, we have to change our 'recycling' method from one that makes sense and does work for our circumstances, to a complete waste of time and resources so that we can tick one of the 'recycle' boxes they do have, regardless if it consumes a considerable additional un-necessary amount of non-renewable resources to achieve.

 

Holyrood 'one-size-fits-all' - 1.

 

Island proofing & common sense - 0.

Burning waste in an incinerator isn't classed as recycling even though it produces energy. It's got nothing to do with Holyrood box ticking.

Some experts say the increased use of market-driven incinerators that constantly need to be fed have a negative effect on the amount of waste getting recycled.

 

 

'Only following orders' is not a valid excuse. That one has been argued over and settled in the past.

 

*If* Holyrood were only complying minimally and reluctantly then I'd buy someone further up the totem was the real problem, but they're not. By all appearances they've embraced it all with gusto and enthusiasm, which makes their culpability at least equal to whoever is forcing the issue from further up.

 

Holyrood are who are forcing this on us, so that's where the blame starts, and our only current concern. If Holywood believes they have 'no choice' its up to them to address that issue themselves, its their concern, not ours.

 

There's incinerating and there's incinerating. Burning crap in a bonfire or burning it in the old Rova Head furnace wasn't 'recycling' in any size, shape or form. We've been doing things differently though for almost twenty years though, and the only obvious reason its not classed as 'recycling' is whoever created teh tick box exercise never thought of our circumstances.

 

What we do is probably almost, if not wholly unique. How many other islands 200 miles from a larger body of land are converting 78% of their waste in to used heat, saving the tonnage of fossil fuels that would create the identical amount of heat if burned? I'm sure, if they wanted to, SHEAP could provide numbers for the tonnage of coal or gas, or the litres of diesel or paraffin that would need to have been burned to provide the heat they've sold to their customers since their inception. I would also expect those numbers to be quite startling to many people.

 

It about a basic exercise in physics. The rubbish is here by default of our purchases, as is we burn it and create however much heat. Under the new plan, we burn diesel to ship some of that rubbish to Aberdeen, then burn more diesel to ship it onward, to where, Northern England or Wales were the last I heard mentioned. Then we burn more diesel to ship back 'non-recycable' combustible waste to burn in the incinerator (which by default will need to be a greater tonnage than was shipped out due to the greater heat producing capabilities of what we shipped out versus those of what we ship in, and/or degradation of the organic content during handling. storage and transportation), or we burn diesel to ship in coal/wood/more diesel/paraffin/whatever to produce an amount of heat equal to that the rubbish we shipped out would have produced.

 

At the end of the day you've just re-arranged the deck chairs on the Titanic and created a significant carbon footprint in doing so. You've shipped plastic south to save on oil used to make plastic from scratch, but have had to ship oil north to do exactly what the plastic derived from oil was already doing. You've shipped paper south to save on chopping down trees to make virgin paper, but you've chopped down trees to make wood pellet briquettes to ship north to use instead, and in doing so you've burned a significant quantity of non-renewable fuel for no purpose whatsoever just carting materials around in circles.

 

If an incinerator is just venting off all the heat it produces to dissipate in to the atmosphere, there's no argument that that isn't recycling. But thats not what we have, we're capturing and using the heat. If recycling plants for plastic and paper were equally as accessible as an incinerator that captured and used the heat it produced, there might be a case for an argument to be made that the recycling option was preferable to incineration. But that's not what we have either, and never will. We're simply too small and produce too little waste plastic and paper to make a local plant viable, and unless someone figures out how to tow us lock, stock and barrel to someplace like the Firth of Forth, we're always going to be too far away for transporting plastic and paper to mainland recycling plants to be sensible or viable in any sense of either word.

 

What's being implemented in Shetland right now is wasting non-renewable resources and creating an un-necessary carbon footprint, its a con and a scam. The only thing it does do is make Holyrood's figures look prettier.

 

Whichever way you play the few numbers the powers that been have deemed we get to know, incineration with capturing and using the resultant heat comes out as the best 'recycling' and 'lowest carbon' option for Shetland's rubbish. Zero Waste Scotland should have been competent enough and/or not politically swayed enough to recognise this, and 'classified' incineration with heat capturing as 'recycling' in Shetland's circumstances. The fact that they didn't should have brought the SIC out to argue the case for it, the fact the 'officials' therein chose instead to parrot Zero Waste Scotland's b/s instead, folk will just have to make their own mind up on. Personally I'm undecided between laziness and incompetence.

 

An incinerator for the disposal of rubbish should never be 'market driven', it should be input driven. Regardless, 'market driven' will never be an issue for an incinerator in Shetland, and that's what we're talking about, not what could occur and might be a problem elsewhere. An attempt to get away from the 'one size fits all' mentality and create the best option for each location. Which is what we've had for nearly twenty years, but Holyrood, despite all their hollow 'island proofing' rhetoric, are now hell-bent on destroying, and replace it with what no doubt probably works well enough in Edinburgh, Glasgow or Dundee, but is a pointless and grossly wasteful method in Shetland.

[Capeesh]

^^^ There's not a country in the world that says incineration is recycling, (even when it's converted into usable energy),

Trying to imply that it's only Holyrood and the SIC that says so is a bit far fetched.

Waste to energy incineration is definitely better than landfill, at least we get something useful out of it, but most developed countries try and take out the reusable materials first.

Edited September 26, 2018 by Capeesh

[Capeesh]

^^^ In 2016 before the import ban China bought around two thirds of the worlds plastic waste, a few more sea hours than a trip from Lerwick to mainland Scotland or mainland Europe for that matter.

Sweden has to import waste to keep their revolutionary recycling plants going, can we not try and emulate the Swedes, save the world and increase local employment at the same time?

Seems logical to me.

Recycling our crap is giving local people jobs, it's actually feeding a few of our neighbours families.

Hooray for recycling!!!

Edited September 26, 2018 by Capeesh

[Ghostrider]

^^^ There's not a country in the world that says incineration is recycling, (even when it's converted into usable energy),

Trying to imply that it's only Holyrood and the SIC that says so is a bit far fetched.

Waste to energy incineration is definitely better than landfill, at least we get something useful out of it, but most developed countries try and take out the reusable materials first.

 

I'm not implying that its only the SIC and Holyrood that says so, I'm stating that that's where the chain of blame starts as far as we're concerned and where we need to start addressing the problem. Whoever is higher up the totem pressuring them, in turn is their problem to address.

 

Taking reusable materials out prior to incineration is fine and well, but when you have, as we do, a relatively miniscule amount of reusable materials, which are already being reused productively, and need to be transported a significant distance to be reused again for their original purpose, you quickly cross the line where you use more non-renewable resources transporting/replacing the material to be reused than you'd use to create the same amount of that material from raw materials. Once that line is crossed you start creating additional un-necessary damage to the finite non-renewable resource you have and/or additional un-necessary environmental damage/additional un-necessary carbon footprint.

 

'Recycling' and 'Environmentally Friendly/Green' are not interchangable terms, and most definitely are not necessarily the same thing. They can be is some circumstances, but in others they're most definitely not. Sending a modern ultra fuel efficient sizeable ocean going vessel fully laden with thousands of tons of plastic to dock at a quayside facility that processes and remanufacturers plastic products on a single site, is a wholly different potentially viable outcome to 'recycling' than a few tonnes at a time on a gas guzzling old heap of a north boat for onward haulage by road/rail for several hundred miles.

Edited September 26, 2018 by Ghostrider

[Ghostrider]

"Want to curb the use of plastics?  Don't recycle them but force manufacturers to use other packaging materials."

 

How about just leaving the oil where it is ?

 

Seems to me that, once extracted, the "genie is out of the bottle" and, you can't get it back in.

 

I've heard much worse plans.....

 

In the last 30-35 years, broadly speaking, we've gone from using plastics in applications where they were the best material for the job, to a present day default of using plastics for any and every job where they can possibly be applied.

 

Plastics are by far the most problematic material to process and dispose of that are prevalent in day to day refuse, so it should have been both predictable and obvious to those charged with waste disposal that the steep increase in plastics usage in recent decades had only one very predictable outcome.

 

Plastics usage, like everything else is bottom line driven by industry. Whatever material costs least, will be their material of choice, and at the moment thats apparently plastics, If Governments were serious about 'recycling', the environment etc, there is a very simple solution they could apply. Tax plastics usage high enough to make it no longer the material to deliver the most profitable bottom line and its usage would decline dramatically. They'd have a good case for doing so too, arguing it was to cove rthe cost to them of disposing of plastics when they reached end of life.

 

It wouldn't take much tax to do in many cases, Johnson & Johnson managed to stop using plastic for the stems of cottom buds and use paper instead after consumer pressure, at no difference in price to the end product, in some shops at least. Where price hikes were inevitable to the consumer from teh alternative materials/transport costs created, so what, the longer manufacturers are allowed to create plastics in any quantity with impunity the greater the clean up and disposal costs are going to be to everyone else, so we'll all pay the same in the end. The only unanswered question at the moment is will it be higher cost consumer products, or higher taxes.

Edited September 27, 2018 by Ghostrider