Serious question. Recycling

Yeah, as above, I've read that it's less harmful in many cases to put it in general waste. A lot of it gets sold and then dumped into foreign rivers and ends up in the ocean. As usual with this country its often not as it seems and is a cynical money making ploy.
 
weemoby said:
Like wylie said, surely you just rinse out the 'dirty recycling' in the same water you've just washed your dishes in? Hardly wasteful.
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That would be the suggested solution but is not always the case. I have a large kitchen but some people don’t have the space to store them until after washing. Personally, I like to remove them to the bin during prep and not have them cluttering work surfaces. I refuse to have a recycling pedal bin in the house.
 
PET has to be dried by heated dry air for several hours before it can be recycled, otherwise it depolymerises via hydrolysis reactions. So may as well wash it first. Won't add that much cost.
 
sherlock1969 said:
They don’t even take glass for recycling up here 🤷‍♂️

Worth bearing in mind that many are on water meters too, so rinsing everything is an added cost.
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Baths and showers (and stuff like hosepipes) use most people's water use. A cubic meter costs £1.23, that's 1,000L, average kitchen sink holds 15-20L so at 20L that's 50 sink fulls. Baths hold 100-250ish L but people don't have a full bath. Rinsing out some plastic you'd probably not notice it on a meter.
 
We have three power plant's down at the Portrack refuse depot. Can anyone on here enlighten us as to the process employed to pruduce tu't electric. As I understand it, the rubbish is fired up to 1500 deg. C using gas burners which I presume heats boilers to produce steam to turn turbine generators etc. etc. Everthing bar garden waste goes up in smoke (although not much of that will be seen at those tempratures.
A bit basic, but I'll stand to be corrected.
 
ThatFragranceGuy said:
Baths and showers (and stuff like hosepipes) use most people's water use. A cubic meter costs £1.23, that's 1,000L, average kitchen sink holds 15-20L so at 20L that's 50 sink fulls. Baths hold 100-250ish L but people don't have a full bath. Rinsing out some plastic you'd probably not notice it on a meter.
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I get the washing it out for hygiene purposes before placing it in your bin but surely when all tins, glass and plastic are being recycled it is melted in a furnace with a percentage of waste contamination. Surely if there is food left in these containers it will either be burnt off or siphoned off as a waste product at the end of the process?
 
Sauce bottles are a swine to clean - the sauce can be lumpy and the necks narrow. Sometimes I put them in general waste. As said its not helping the Planet for me to use alot of hot water on them.
 
You're a wrongun if you put recycled materials into receptacles without cleaning them out first. Regardless of the cleaning process after kerbside collection, who ***** manky plastic / cardboard containers stewing away in their garage/garden??
 
FatFrank said:
You're a wrongun if you put recycled materials into receptacles without cleaning them out first. Regardless of the cleaning process after kerbside collection, who ***** manky plastic / cardboard containers stewing away in their garage/garden??
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How is that different to the rest of your rubbish? Why do you think your recycling should be clean but your general waste shouldn't. Not long ago I had kids in nappies so my bin was mostly filled with actual ****. That's why we keep them outside! We have multiple wheelie bins for general, garden, cardboard and glass/plastics. Seems weird to obsess about the cleanliness of only one of those bins.

My council says rinse so I rinse. It doesn't say clean thoroughly because I assume it is washing them (or they don't need to be washed if they are being incinerated).
 
Facefuzz said:
How come my bin is contaminated if I leave abit of ketchup in the bottle when I recycle?
Surely the first stage is some kind of cleaning?
Crazy
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How come they didn’t keep the ketchup glass bottle is probably a better question to ask? Too difficult for many to possibly get the ketchup out of the bottle maybe? Or perhaps it was just better all round to add more plastic waste to the dump while convincing people that glass bottles are too expensive?
 
Expat Smoggie said:
How come they didn’t keep the ketchup glass bottle is probably a better question to ask? Too difficult for many to possibly get the ketchup out of the bottle maybe? Or perhaps it was just better all round to add more plastic waste to the dump while convincing people that glass bottles are too expensive?
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Reduced risk of breakage. Glass is harder to shape and has to be thicker so you get less product into the same footprint. Glass weighs more and is harder to transport so increases costs and emissions and reduces the amount you can fit in a single HGV container. Glass uses a lot more resources to produce. Plastic is as easy to recycle as glass.
 
Nano said:
How is that different to the rest of your rubbish? Why do you think your recycling should be clean but your general waste shouldn't. Not long ago I had kids in nappies so my bin was mostly filled with actual ****. That's why we keep them outside! We have multiple wheelie bins for general, garden, cardboard and glass/plastics. Seems weird to obsess about the cleanliness of only one of those bins.

My council says rinse so I rinse. It doesn't say clean thoroughly because I assume it is washing them (or they don't need to be washed if they are being incinerated).
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Recycling is once every 2 weeks, I know some councils are going to once every 2 weeks for refuse but ours is still once every week. Even then we give our waste a cursory rinse. We make our own cat food from organ meat and and muscle and although the the packaging can mostly go in recycling, not all of it can, and it hums if you dont clean it out. But even normal recycling goes in our garage until collection day so don't want that stinking out, as for regular waste if it's going to sit for 1-6 days potentially in summer heat, it gets a rinse if it's likely to stink.
 
Expat Smoggie said:
How come they didn’t keep the ketchup glass bottle is probably a better question to ask? Too difficult for many to possibly get the ketchup out of the bottle maybe? Or perhaps it was just better all round to add more plastic waste to the dump while convincing people that glass bottles are too expensive?
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I always get glass ketchup and brown sauce bottles. I can't abide the farting sound the plastic bottles make.
 
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