Comments on: Recycling

By: Peaches

Peaches — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 11:47:28 +0000

Quick comment on toothpaste: no need to buy it. Ever. Bread soda is much more effective. I bought little plastic container from Japanese shop on Chatam St, filled it with bread soda and have never used toothpaste since. Once I forgot to take it with me when I was away and had to revert to toothpaste, my mouth felt unclean.

Agree with comments re reducing packaging at source. I love M&S food but, the packaging… unbelievable. So wasteful.

By: KM

KM — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 16:17:04 +0000

freecycle.org is something I use. A swingset that my kids grew out of ended up at the home of an 18 month old for example. We offloaded all kinds of stuff that had accumulated with changing careers, moving houses, kids growing out of etc. New homes for stuff, no extra packaging ending in landfills, cost-efficient, environment friendly.

By: Graham

Graham — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:57:06 +0000

Ricky hit the nail on the head, recycling efforts are there to appease our guilt. Recycling doesn’t do much at all for the environment. Recycled paper wastes tons of water, not to mention electricity. The only way to truly change our wasteful habits is to reduce packaging waste at source through proper legislation.
What do people think happens to all the plastic that gets recycled?
Check out this article for just part of the story.
http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/travel-leisure/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we.shtml

By: Redhead

Redhead — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 15:31:31 +0000

I have no real problem with the glass as we have a recycling centre close by but we throw out an awful lot of plastic packaging and I know that if we could put that in the green bin we would only have to put the black bin out once every 3-4 weeks. As it is we only put it out evey two weeks… I wonder if the use of fuel to bring the glass and plastic to the bring centres counters the green-ness of the recycling of the products?????????

By: Joe Haslam

Joe Haslam — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:44:54 +0000

Interestng article.

Two further points worth making. One from The Economist article you refer to and the other on Architect William McDonough (note the spelling) whom IÂ´ve met.

Originally kerbside programmes asked people to put paper, glass and cans into separate bins. But now the trend is toward co-mingled or “single stream” collection. San Francisco, which changed from multi to
single-stream collection a few years ago, now boasts a recycling rate of
69%â€”one of the highest in America. Although all recycling facilities
still employ people, investment is increasing in optical sorting
technologies that can separate different types of paper and plastic.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9249262

McDonough can be a contraversial figure. He has been criticised for being far too close to the Wal-Marts and the Coca-Colas and the Exxon Mobils of this world. I would recommend anyone interested in this subject to read up about him for themselves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McDonough

By: Gerry

Gerry — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 13:49:18 +0000

why the hell should this country welcome recycling? Oh I can hear all the happy clappy do gooders getting their backs up but the facts are plain, RECYCLING HAS LITTLE OR NOTHING TO DO WITH Ireland and pretending this is otherwise is to ignore the future of this country., The recylcling lobby are a crowd of chancers, fair play to them i’d do the same but then why should we be STUPID IMBECILES and letting them in here and paying them to take away our rubbish. Paying THEM because no-one Irish wants to take away our rubbish but we did ten or fifteen years ago but not any more apparently and, oh yes I am the bad man for point thing this out then there is a ROMA GYPSY on the M50 roundabout and a NIGERIAN collecting IRISH rubbish for the purposes probably or recycling it OR WORSE

I have a lot more to say on this subject.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 13:35:48 +0000

The Economist article singled out CA for its high-tech separating systems and agreed that “multi-stream” collection is the way to go.
The only other suspicion I had was what Quinn Glass did with the glass. That’s Quinn as in Sean Quinn, cement, quarries etc….I checked with them and they said they recycle the glass 100% back into glass but……….
I also think that the “per bag” system is much better at controlling what people throw out.

By: Justin Mason

Justin Mason — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 12:49:51 +0000

Yeah, Dublin City has the same recycling rules as Fingal regarding glass and plastic. Every now and again we get in the car, load it up with binbags of glass and plastic, and drive over to our local “bring centre”, where we join the crowd of other painfully middle-class types emptying them one by one into those green-glass/brown-glass/plastic bins.

It seems a bit crap, really. when I lived in Melbourne, Oz, 5 years ago, they had no problem dealing with glass and plastic there, and even the much-derided Orange County, California could deal with all types of recycling — get this — thrown together into the one bin! No labourious hand-sorting, 4 bins sitting around the kitchen, and weekly trips to the bring centre. (They had a higher rate of effective domestic recycling than Dublin did, last time I looked, if I recall correctly.)

By: Sarah

Sarah — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 12:44:47 +0000

Yeah, Fingal lame there..they should let plastics in. We have to bring our glass to the recycling centre which is 10 miles away, but we do it every couple of months.
Reduce..totally agree there. That was really the bottom line of the column. We gotta stop throwing out the stuff in the first place..

By: Ricky The Saint

Ricky The Saint — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 12:16:23 +0000

Recycling is obviously a good idea, but placing the responsiblity for environmnetal improvement is wrong. Quite simply if the responsibility was really placed on the producer and retailer there would be much less packaging in the first place, such as in Austria, therefore less raw materials and energy are used and there is less material to be recycled and less energy necessary for recycling.

REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE

we are focussing on the recycle rather than reduce

Real environmental improvement can only be made by regulating the producers/retailers. Repak is a neat scheme which means that irish companies can appear environmental friendly without altering any of their practices, if you want to see real waste reduction legislation and practice see how it is done in austria.

The current recycling regime is a sop to peoples guilt and accrues little environmental benefit.