Recycle! Positive Comments Welcome

[Frances144]

Today I are mostly would be seeing our Council-provided wheelie bins avec their two bungee straps flying through the air with greatest of ease pass my windows on their way to Norway!

[Space]

Today I are mostly would be seeing our Council-provided wheelie bins avec their two bungee straps flying through the air with greatest of ease pass my windows on their way to Norway!

 

If you want to keep an eye on your bin, perhaps keep it from blowing away, you could take it everywhere you go, even to the beach 

 

 

Edited February 14, 2018 by Space

[George.]

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Edited February 14, 2018 by George.

[George.]

Haven't the S. I. C given a good list of where black bags are available. They have stated that you can buy them at:

 

• Aywick Shop, Yell
• Bigton Community Shop
• Bolts Minimarket, Lerwick
• Brae Garage
• Final Checkout, Unst
• H Henderson, Unst
• JWJ, Whalsay
• Linkshouse Stores, Yell
• Mail Shop, Bressay
• Sandwick Baking Company, Sandwick
• Skibhoul Stores, Unst

They've missed Tesco in Lerwick and the shop down the road from me, and various other shops as well. Aren't they good - for nothing. They do make a point of how much they charge when you buy from them, no doubt expecting you to put your hand in your pocket. Luckily, I live on the coast.

[Wheelsup]

Maybe that’s just shops supplied by SIC. They had already bought them before the stopped issuing them for free.

[Colin]

I use empty coal bags.

[Ghostrider]

 

 

Please, let's use this thread to ....... answer questions,....

 

Where is the evidence, preferably in the form of a detailed, comprehensive, accurate, realistic and  believable environmental audit, proving the proposed changes will create a more environmentally beneficial situation than the status quo?

 

Don't refer me to the cherry picked waffling piece of spin and propoganda that's been waved around so far either, its devoid of accuracy and fluffily light on data quantified in numbers and hard facts to the point its more unhelpful than helpful.

 

Prove this is an environmentally beneficial change and I'll back it, otherwise it IS just a box ticking political exercise that deserves contempt.

 

Just because 'Zero Waste Scotland' aka. Holyrood says it is, most certainly does not make it so - if for no other reason than they are political, and by default of being so operate primarily to a political agenda.

 

Your single question deserves an answer. Please attend a Carbon Literacy seminar and teach yourself about how to answer your own question.

 

Further, what will you do to recycle?

 

 

Stop side stepping the question by moving the goalposts.

 

The EU, via the Scottish Government via the SIC expects me to expend the time and effort to required, to comply with their new refuse collection and disposal model.

 

I do not believe their new model to be less damaging to the planet's resources and the environment than the current model in use, in fact I believe their new model will consume more of the planet's resources and cause greater enviornmental damage that the current model. The onus is on the EU, via the Scottish Government, via the SIC to provide proof their new model consumes less of the planet's resource and causes less environmental damage than the current model if they're expecting folk's cooperation, not on each individual to go and seek on that answer for themselves. They're proposing the change, they're implementing the change, its their responsibility to convince people its the right one.

 

I'll skip over the patronising arrogance of your reply, which in and of itself marks you down as very probably an SIC employee. But I will point out that I have disabilities which prevent me from attending most events. What provision is there to make reasonable adjustments so that someone with disabilities is not excluded from these seminars you mention?

 

Finally, regardless what may be on offer at any seminar, it is not going to answer my questions, which are case specific to the SIC's new waste collection, management and disposal proposals, as they have not revealed/quantified the amounts involved.

 

What tonnage of combustible material will their proposal remove from the incinerator, and what is the loss of thermal capacity to SHEAP by default of that removal of fuel? How many tonnes of material will be shipped to Aberdeen and onward haulage, and what is the carbon footprint in transportation terms of each of those tonnes to reach its reprocessing destination? What are the current/historical emissions of the incinerator, and what are they expected to be once teh new model is up and running? I could go on all night, and I'd still not e done, but you get the gist....

 

ALL of the above questions and their answers, and dozens more factor in to the big picture equation of whether or not the new model is an 'improvement' over the current model, or not. Where are those questions answered, where is the data to do so with, why has it not been published in full? They surely wouldn't have something to hide, would they.

 

Blind us with science, stop trying to baffle us with bovine excrement.

 

As to what I do to recycle - and I'm getting a little tired answering this question on here. I do what I've always done, and most Shetlanders used to do. Pretty much anything I own, or have ever owned was obtained used. When something breaks, I fix it. When something is unfixable, it gets broken up and component parts 're-purposed', and if SIC - Housing had had the midder wit to provide every house they own with at least one lum, instead of everything run on diesel guzzling over-priced electric, I could carry in both hands with room to spare all I'd actually throw away each week, as the rest would be helping keep me warm.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Ghostrider

[Davie P]

re: "Where is the evidence" A place to start http://www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/research-evidence

Edited February 15, 2018 by Davie P

[Ghostrider]

re: "Where is the evidence" A place to start http://www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/research-evidence

 

Like I said in my first reply on this thread, they aren't impartial, they're political. A Holyrood invention doing Holyrood's bidding, cherry picking what suits their ends and ignoring what doesn't.

[Davie P]

Maybe contacting the SIC would be more fruitful than asking such specific questions here

[George.]

Maybe that’s just shops supplied by SIC. They had already bought them before the stopped issuing them for free.

 

Free? Since when? Oh yes, that was a few years ago. The S. I. C. charges £16.00 for 200 bag and have done for some time now, that is listed online. None of the shops will ever give them away when they are having to charge for them as well. 

Edited February 15, 2018 by George.

[Suffererof1crankymofo]

Maybe contacting the SIC would be more fruitful than asking such specific questions here

I did!  See other thread.  Ghostie knows I did.  They just refer to Zero Waste's rhetoric and what's in the reports presented to the councillors.  They don't appear to like it when you point out holes in their arguments.  

[Suffererof1crankymofo]

I have just been given a good suggestion regarding the bulky uplifts. Although this wasn't what the OP was discussing.

OK it is £30 or £10 for 6 items.

So if people in an area got together and pooled their requirements, say if two of you had 3 items each that would be  £15 or £5 each.

This forum would be the ideal place to organise this from.

So you reckon that your neighbours, assuming you're on speaking terms, will all be purchasing replacement furniture, white goods, etc., and disposing of their old ones at the same time, do you?  If you live in social housing, you can't necessarily whack it in your back garden because the SIC don't like it plus more often than not come a gale and you have a washing machine literally flying around your garden (seen it happen).

[Ghostrider]

Maybe contacting the SIC would be more fruitful than asking such specific questions here

 

I'm not very confident they have the answers either. There seems to be a definite "we're only following orders" attitude within the SIC on this one, especially as it didn't seem that the SIC's 'officiers' saw fit to include it in the 'Report' they put in front of Councillors on the issue, and its not even hinted at in the material the OP suggested consulting on the SIC's website, etc.

 

The only reason I brought it up here was, as I noted in my original post on the thread, in response to the OP's invitation.....

 

 

Please, let's use this thread to.......answer questions.....

 

I really have only one question, possibly two if you're being pedantic. 'Where is the verifiable evidence to support the assertion that the new refuse disposal model is less damaging to the environment, and uses less natural resources than the current model, and why should anyone support the new model without being furnished with such evidence?

 

Just ask yourself. Lets suppose you take one tonne of plastic from Shetland to be recycled, you save however much crude oil it takes to make one tonne of plastic, that is the simple bit.

 

However, to recycle that one tonne, you had to use crude oil to manufacture and transport/distribute the bins that collected it, you used some more to create the sorting shed it passed through, more still to power the machinery in that shed, more to load it on a truck and take it to the boat, the boat uses more to get it to the its next port, it then uses more still to get it transported by road, rail or whatever to the reprocessing plant. You're still not done though, because that plastic wasn't just being discarded and lost, it was previously used to provide heat in buildings, so either you burn fossil fuels capable of providing an identical thermal value to replace it, or you have to expend yet more oil to road/rail transport replacemnt waste to a ferry/boat, that boat uses yet more to get it here, and finally you use yet more to unload it from the boat and deliver it to the incinerator. And they're expecting us to just take their word for it that creating a tonne of plastic uses more oil than all of that in this paragraph - I'm having more than just a little difficulty buying it, and thats an understatement. especially in light of the fact that plastics are so cheap, and any fuel capable of providing heat is anything but cheap.

 

Likewise, you have a pile of paper sitting in their sorting shed, you ship it south to be turned back in to clean paper, that saves however many trees it takes to make that quantity of paper. You've lost its fuel value to the incinerator for the District Heating though, which needs to be replaced by an alternative fuel - and apparently its okay to use wood pellets as that alternative fuel.

 

There's no polite way of saying this, but wood is the raw material which is turned in to paper, paper is a product made from wood..... How in hell can it possibly be 'green' to incur the carbon footprint of shipping paper south, and the carbon footprint of shipping an equal weight of wood north, when they are both the same with the same thermal capacity, they've just been processed differently. Yet, its not green to just burn the bloody paper where it is anyway.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Ghostrider

[JustMe]

Yes local councils have to do some sort of recycling as part of the EU rules so I am hearing some of you thinking "well what about Brexit?".  As far as I can tell the plan is to shift EU rules into UK law so the SIC will still have to have a recycling policy.  My local council (I have gone South) has a weekly recycling collection.......ordinary domestic waste is fortnightly.........and after a few teething troubles it seems to work well enough.  Yes it means people have to do a little work sorting out what can be recycled but it saves the council being penalised for low recycling rates and I guess saves the planet to some extent.

 

My only gripe with the SIC plan is that glass is not collected.  Long walk to the glass bank from where many people live,