(no subject)

[sobrique]

It's Friday. Fridays are good days, generally.

This particular one, it seems likely that I shall make it to the pub, although somewhat constrained due to being on call.

I seem to have picked up a lurgy somewhere too, I blame my housemates :).


Last night was swimming, managed a mile again.

Popped to Sainsburies that night, for some more breathe right strips. Spotted Pain au chocolat on special offer, so that was breakfast sorted.

Got in early today, and now have an A4 diary thingy, to work as a to-do list. It's seeming to work out quite nicely, but we'll see how that goes.

This afternoon, I visit the opticians for some 'extended wear' contacts. They're the 'wear continually for about a month' ones, which... well shall we say are more suited to my needs - namely things like maelstrom, where faffing with contacts in the middle of a field, especially when I may have had a few, struck me as particularly bad.

Address changing is such a pain, I've been visiting places over the last week or so to 'update' but every single one has strange and whacky requirements for bills, statements, that kind of thing to prove previous/new residency.

And on to other things.


And on an unrelated note, would anyone happen to have some good restaurant recommendations for a lunchtime around Canterbury way?

---

On Radio 4 this morning, was a discussion of recycling, including how we in the UK are getting better, but are still rubbish at it. It seems something of a hot topic - lots of people get annoyed by having 6 bins, different collections, charging for collections or whatever.

So I thought I'd seek some opinions. If you were In Charge, how would you implement a recycling scheme? I'm a firm believe that if you're asking people to do additional work, then you need to 'sell' it as a positive step (which is mostly being done) but you also need to make it straightforward and easy. It'll also need to be cost effective, so whilst 'get someone to sort all the rubbish' is an option, it'll have to be something that gets funded 'somehow'.

IF you're requiring recycling to be done in the home, you'll need to provide 'some way' to manage it - just telling people to put different stuff in their bin isn't going to work, since ... well what do I do with my empty tins, when my bin is filling up with paper?

What do you think?

Where I lived previously, there were 3 bins. A 'refuse' bin, a 'recycling' bin, and a 'paper' box. Different weeks, the recycling bin had different things collected. Which just struck me as mostly unworkable.
Personally I'm somewhat inclined with the concept of something like mini bottle/tin/clothes banks on pretty much every street, maybe with a 'split bin' that has like slots for different kinds of things to be distributed.

Comments

[portilis.livejournal.com]

Will ask friends regarding places to eat in Canterbury and get back to you hopefully.

[elrohana.livejournal.com]

We have one green bin for recycling paper, card, cardboard, newpapers and mags, tin foil, tins, plastic bottle, foil trays etc. Glass you have to take yourself to bottle banks, garden waste you have to take to the tip yourself, or stick both these in your black bin. The black bin is emptied every week, the green one once every 4 weeks. My black bin goes out about once every 3 or 4 weeks, and I have 2 green bins which are usually full by the time the collection comes round. I compost garden waste and collect glass and take it (and anything else I can think of) to the tip periodically. I reckon, people who care about recycling will do it anyway, no matter how much faff it is, whilst the ones who don't care won't do it no matter how easy you make it, unless you fine them for NOT doing it. Which is the way its going to go anyway

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

There's always going to be those who will 'always' and those that 'won't care'. But I also think there's a rather large middleground. By shifting the dividing line there, you improve recycling a great deal without having to mess around with fines.

Now, yes, for the extreme end, fines may be necessary, but simple things, like providing somewhere to put the stuff to recycle as you generate it makes it a lot easier. If all you've got is a single wheelie bin, then the relative nuisance of sorting and then tipping your stuff is going to discourage a lot of people.

[elrohana.livejournal.com]

My next door neighbours can't even be arsed to sort those few things that should go in their green bin. Their green bin never gets put out. They just shove everything in the black one. AND the husband is retired so there's no excuse about being too busy. SOME people need to be fined. Or at least charged for their waste - and believe me, when the councils bring that in, supermarkets will be inundated with people complaining about too much packaging on their products. I'm not the least worried, as I already recycle so much stuff, my bin charges will be minimal. But the majority of people are in for a nasty shock.

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

I would tend to agree, you'll always have that situation. Charging for 'sorting' seems like a reasonable thing to me, and would help to 'incentivize'. But like I say, if it's clear, obvious and straightforward, you'll have much less of that going on.

[purp1e-magic.livejournal.com]

Guilty culprit, here. We do reclycle some stuff. And I'm sure that once we get into the habit it'll be easier. But at the moment we don't very often.

The trouble is, we don't have that much stuff that needs recycling. We rarely use tinned goods and glass bottles. Cardboard and paper are usually re-used, and you can't recylce them when dirty or made into paper mache. Other paper, I'm careful with because we don't have a shredder, and identity theft is often a concern. Glossy paper, which we don't often re-use, can't be recycled here anyway. Mills are starting to have problems with envelopes because they've been recycled that many times, it reduces the quality of the recycled paper. Also, if possible, I use companies that do most stuff online rather than on paper (for the selfish reason that their overheads are lower, so it's cheaper). Plastic isn't collected, and what we do have is basically milk containers. Empty plastic containers often get filled with liquid waste before being thrown away. We do recycle carrier bags at the supermarket, and we also use them as bin liners. I'm also starting to be more careful about taking bags with me when I shop.

Overall our recycling efforts tend to stop at taking grass cuttings to the tip.

We would like to recylce more, and we do have some stuff we could, like the occassional tin can, the few bits of paper and so on. But fining us wouldn't help. There's not enough of it to significantly change how much we would pay.

Before you're too harsh on your neighbour, bear in mind that people of that generation are often very efficient. The don't recycle because they re-use everything, cook from fresh, so they don't have packets of things, and generally can produce very small amounts of recylable rubbish. I don't know if that's the case with your neighbours, but bear in mind that recycling isn't the only answer. Reusing is even better, when possible.

[elrohana.livejournal.com]

Nope, they eat pre-packaged crap. He's early retired, they're only in their fifties. I've seen what spills out of their bin, and it includes the plastic milk bottles that CAN go in the green bin here. I get my milk from the milkman, even though I could do without the extra expense atm.

[purp1e-magic.livejournal.com]

I tend to buy milk from the local corner shop. Their milk always tastes nicer than the supermarket's, and I think they're supplied by a local dairy. It's a little more expensive, but definitely worth it. If your milkman is anything like that, then I know what you mean.

[elrohana.livejournal.com]

I picked my milkman by googling for dairy farms in the Leeds area then ringing them to find out if they delivered bottles. One did, and hey presto, I had a milkman! We've moved house since then, same farm, different milkman. My milk comes from cows who chew the cud about 13 miles from my house :) Sadly its 43p a pint which is a bit 'ouch' when Asda's is 33p for a pint plastic bottle and less if you buy the big 2, 4 or 6 pint bottles.

[queex.livejournal.com]

In Nuneaton and Bedworth, we have a black bin (for regular refuse), a green bin (for garden waste only) and a red box (for anything recyclable). This might be useful, except the red boxes are small, get blown about by wind, and you're expected to do nearly all of the processing of anything you put in it.

There are ways of mechanically reclaiming some recyclabnle material, and I tink anyuthing that can be reclaimed that way should be left in the general rubbish.

More local recycling points is a good start, but if it's chucking it down with rain even the end of the street may too far with armfuls of collapsed boxes.

How about a bin the size of a normal wheelie bin but with compartments for different types of recyclabel material? Then you don't have to bag it or process it.

To be honest, I think the most essential step is to stop packaging goods with so much crap.

Take polystyrene inserts- crumbly, non-recyclable and non-reusable. It would be much better to have squishy, reusable cushions (a bit like the air bags in amazon boxes, but maybe more durable), because you could use them in all sorts of places.

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, there's a lot of 'rubbish' packing which could definitely be cut down on. I think that's one step. Especially ensuring that packing is either biodegradable, or recyclable. (Obviously, only in cases where it's possible/safe to do so)

The rest, well, dividing up the stuff is a chore, the real question becomes if it's better to do that at the household (which has it's own implications and complications) or if it's better to do that in some kind automated sorting system. Or just collect the whole lot, add 20 quid a month on the council tax, and have a big 'sorting division'.

[queex.livejournal.com]

The trouble in our area is that the recycling scheme doesn't just require you to sort it- you need to just about everything you can do short of melting the cans down.

Then the whole lot is left out in the wind to get strewn across the street.

I would think that simply giving every household a composter and refusing to take most kinds of food waste might be a novel approach.

[elrohana.livejournal.com]

Cooked food waste can't be composted as its a) a health hazard and b) attracts vermin.

I say make every get a dog and then there wouldn't BE any food waste. I never throw leftover food anywhere but in the composter or in the dog

[elrohana.livejournal.com]

*make every household

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Then we'd have to stop making everybody work 9-5 Mon-Fri so all those single people's dogs didn't go insane with loneliness and destroy everything. Woohoo, the solution to the 'live to work' problem.

[elrohana.livejournal.com]

Yup, sounds good to me. Incidentally, my dog is alone 7.30 to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday, he's border collie so psycho looney, and since we got him an indoor kennel (read cage) he just sleeps while we're out and makes up for it by being twice as bonkers when we are there. He does get very energetic walks/runs morning and night though. I used to come home at lunchtime at first, till he got used to the idea, but now when I get home at night he's just getting up and stretching/yawning when I open the door.

[fearmeforiampink]

You'd still have problems with people like me, who'd just plain refuse to have a dog - I don't like dogs and still have issues from almost being bitten by a wild/rabid/angry one as a child.

[elrohana.livejournal.com]

We'd probably make you have a pet aardvark or something instead - anything that would eat your left-over food. Or you'd just be fined if you didn't eat all your dinner :)

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

I heard that aardvarks are kinda aard'work :)

[malal.livejournal.com]

I love dogs, they are generally wonderful, wonderful creatures. :-)

However I know full well that I'm not in a position to own one right now. They mainly boil down to "is not a responsible enough adult". :-(

[purp1e-magic.livejournal.com]

In Crawley, where my parents live, they did give every household a composter. It worked, too. I never thought my parents would do it, but they do. They have no use for the compost, but still they do. It's amazing to see.

In Bristol they have a green bin for recylable materials, which gets collected weekly, and a grey bin for non-recyclable materials which gets collected fortnightly.

In Stockton there's a bag for paper and a box for clean recyclable materials, which get collected fortnightly (and, like you say, get strewn about all over the place) and a bin that gets collected weekly. Now that we've given our house a good sort-out, we're not putting it out every week.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I'd use the system we have in Camridge, because it works. We have these bins: black for ordinary rubbish, green for things that can be composted, small blue for plastic bottles, small black for paper, cans, aluminium foil, glass. They get collected black bins one week, blue/green ones the next, and if you put the compostable waste in the green bin wrapped in newspaper and wash out the cans and jars like they say to in the leaflets it all works without smelling. The bin men who pick up the small black bin sort the bits into different openings on the rubbish truck, and there's a free environmental magazine that comes round in which there are little notices between the articles that say binmen like it if you sort your black bin rubbish into different bags or boxes. In a chavvier area where people neither read what they're given nor care about the environment as long as they get their next hit of McDonalds it wouldn't work as well, though.

[tenuous.livejournal.com]

Simplest solution in my mind would be to redesign kitchen pedestal bins. We recycle and compost virtually everything, but it takes up an enormous amount of space in our kitchen with all the different containers. Recently I've started to see dual, or even triple, container kitchen bins appearing on the market, which will make life a damn-sight easier. With one of these it's only a question of deciding which chute to drop your rubbish down when you're standing over the bin.

In Rugby black/green bins and paper boxes are all picked up weekly which makes life much easier, too.

[purp1e-magic.livejournal.com]

Where can you get such bins? And can you get smaller bins of that type, or only kitchen bins?

[tenuous.livejournal.com]

They're starting to appear all over the place. I've seen them in a cookware shop in Rugby, and in Solihull, too.

Google came up with these:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-ECO-DUO-KITCHEN-RECYCLE-BIN-2-BINS-IN-1_W0QQitemZ110015521291QQihZ001QQcategoryZ98850QQcmdZViewItem

http://www.laundrycompany.co.uk/recyclebins.htm

They're the way forward, in my opinion, as it makes the decision to recycle virtually effortless.

food stuff

[jambon-gris.livejournal.com]

Cafe des Amie du Mexique (or somethinf like that) was good a few years ago. If its still there its by the west gate, which you cant miss its a big stone gate thing that chokes all the traffic.

Re: food stuff

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

I have an image of a like, portcullis with a car sized noose.