Recycling Stress

Yes, I wondered whether it's worth its own thread, Happiyogi?

So did anyone watch the Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall programme on BBC 1 last night?

I found it shocking, both in the immense scale of the problem and in the attitude of some of the people who are contributing to it.

@Nannarose this is a widely-held belief, particularly amongst the people leaving their tents behind, but in the news report I was listening to, it rarely if ever happens these days. In other words, the discarded tents go into landfill.

As a sideline - when we had our house in France we found all sorts of discarded stuff buried in the garden. Including a cylinder vacuum cleaner, and a carrycot with blankets etc in our veg. patch. I was worried there might be something more sinister inside.
The house was quite isolated. We had to take our rubbish to the communal bins a mile away and sort it there. Or some things to the waste disposal place 15 miles away.

I think that we do next a bit of the kind of stress that will generate action. Immediately, if not sooner as my dad used to say.

I read an article by Hannah Ellis-Petersen in the Guardian online this morning. It's called "Treated like trash: south east Asia vows to return mountains of rubbish from west". Some is from the UK, so it could have actually passed through our hands. We can't really just go on cheerfully doing our little bit while turning a blind eye to what happens next.

We are like someone who regularly empties their bins over the fence into next door's garden because they're poorer than us, and anyway we've never actually met them. Then we're smug because - look! - our garden is beautifully cared for... until we eventually realise that next door's "storage" is at capacity and the filthy mess is spreading back into our space and affecting our environment.

Some organisations, employing real people, in the UK are exporting our waste which we believed would be responsibly recycled. There are mountains of it, choking real people on the other side of the world. It's time to name, shame and sack those responsible and create a system of real accountability. Then we can stop stressing.

I think its great that you and many other GNers are trying their best to change things for the better. How does the slogan go? The climate is changing so we must too

I was trying to explain the local recycling system to my German helper just this week. She was surprised that we can only put certain types of plastic together and that cans can go with plastic and paper but not bottles. All food must be washed off. Shredded paper cannot go in the paper and card bin.
Luckily we compost most things and the slugs know exactly what to do with them.

Difficult to recycle when every day is spent throwing away mountains of disposable gloves, plastic bags and catheter equipment, inco pads etc. - it is shocking what goes in our bin but needs must.

Please don't feel stressed about this. If you are doing your best to recycle anything, then you are doing better than most people.
It's more important for Millions of people to do some recycling than for a few to do it absolutely perfectly.
I try to do my bit. Sort household items, washed, into the council bins, reuse anything that's suitable eg screw top glass jars for food containers. I use a local "Zero waste" shop, just buying loose dry goods as needed.
I have four children which is good motivation to protect the planet, also encourage them to be green and recycle. The girls are great and pass on to me all their old clothes !!! which means that I never buy new "except undies!" Bless them.
If you have a garden, do make your own compost. It's fabulous, and ticks so many recycling boxes.
You can't do anything about other countries ethics so don't stress about America. Talk to other people about this! You do find that some have great new ideas and some do nothing but, talking about it may influence them. As I have said, don't stress about it and just do your bit.
Reduce. Reuse. Refuse. Recycle.
Anyone got any more Re suggestions.

I find it annoying - I am easily annoyed! - when I go on holiday and have to read through complicated new information about recycling - I would like a holiday from that!!!

I have never had a problem. The shredded paper goes in in layers with garden and household vegetable waste on top, although the household waste includes bits of paper like tillslips and the cotton wool I use to remove my make-up. I have two wooden composters next door to each other, each a 1 metre cube. Perhaps the bigger composters so close reach higher internal temperatures that ensures everything composts.

Monica, I had been putting shredded paper in my composter, along with some eggshells, a small amount of leaves, etc.but nothing happens. Is there something you're supposed to add ( it's all contained beneath a tight lid )? Whereas I'd read that the ash from an incinerator is very good to put on the soil. Certainly quicker - I've waited so long for my composter to do anything at all.

Some months ago, there was a very interesting programme about landfill. I forget which country (it was Belgium or Holland) but they are 'mining' a landfill site, extracting items which can now be recycled and re-burying that which is still not recyclable. This practice will become widespread one day.

There has been talk here about fines for putting the wrong things in recycling bins, but this would be difficult to enforce.

I agree, pollyolly. I have put them back out for collection, but they are not picked up and risk blowing away. so I keep them and re-use them as plastic bags (as I don't buy any!)

Good to see that others are annoyed about recycling. Our council provides three bins, blue for glass, plastic, tins and paper, brown for garden and food waste and black for everything else. I have a wormery which gets most of the food waste and a number of compost heaps. On one day recently I brought batteries to Tesco's, printer cartridges to the hospice centre, unused medicines to Boots, old specs to the optician and magazines to the doctor's and clothes and shoes to a charity shop.
Despite all of this it's still the packaging which causes the problems since so much of it can't be recycled. I feel really guilty about my Tassimo pods. They can be recycled through TerraCycle but there are no drop off points in N. Ireland.
We definitely need a national strategy and some sort of enforcement.

And even worse for the poor workers at the re-cycling centre who are presented with tied plastic bags containing dirty nappies.
We had a circular from our council today about this.
People don't realise that at the next stage it's real people who have to sort their rubbish.

In Switzerland, close to where we live now, the rubbish bags cost 3.30 francs per bag in some communities. It is amazing how much one can stuff into a 35 liter bag if you try hard enough, or how much one can do without if you have to pay this phenominal amount for each "privilege"

How I hate it when a large plastic bag (inside a small plastic bag) from a charity pops through my letter box at least once a week, I take all my unwanted clothing etc. to the local charity shop so have no use for these wretched unrecyclable things. What shall I do with them? If I use them for bin liners they are all going to landfill!

I know that a number of festivals hand over the clean-up to organisations (often charities) that recycle and re-use what they can. I know that for some years, Oxfam sent the tents left at Glastonbury to disaster areas.
Whilst I am glad they are re-used, I am astonished at the careless attitude! How proud we were of our first tent, how carefully we cared for it, and it lasted us 20 years!

I do what I can to recycle and I try not to waste food - it's unbelievable how much food is thrown away, but don't beat yourself up about it.

I’m glad I’ve found my tribe here! My family, particularly my husband, say I’m obsessed with recycling. Thankfully, my LA is also very good and recycles most things. I can’t believe glass bottles aren’t recycled in at least one LA!

One thing that really annoys me is all the tents left behind after festivals. Does anyone know of a way these can be recycled? Perhaps we could muster a GN army of volunteers to collect them up if so!

Hapiyogi all I can speak for is my own local authority -and I said I was speaking from my own experience, I was not recommending it to others. I assume other people have nous enough to work out whether this is a sensible strategy in their own LA area.

Joplin much better to shred all your bank statements etc and put them on a compost heap. The composted paper will nurture your plants. If things are going to be burnt, it is better they go to a municipal incinerator which will be far more efficient and will produce, document for document far fewer emissions than a garden incinerator.

Sorry, I'm an avid recycler, and heaven help anyone at work who puts something recyclable into the ordinary bin!

But to get oneself "stressed* over it is ott. Think about what "stress" means in a mental health context.

Anxiety, raised heart rate, breathing changed, panic attacks,the "fight or flight" reaction. If anyone experiences that sort of reaction over recycling, then heaven help them!

I was at an Irish food market yesterday. Everything is sold unwrapped but they provided a brown paper bag. All fine until the bag burst and my unwrapped loaf fell on the ground!

I have just bought an incinerator, primarily to burn garden leaves & twigs but it's also an excellent way of disposing of bank statements, invoices, etc.that I'd stored for years - just in case - & I kept putting off the process of shredding. Now it's so much more satisfying, quick, not to mention more secure, just to drop a match on top of the lot. The ashes can be used to put on the beds at a later date.