Mini rant re recycling

M

micamaca

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Is anyone else here fed up having to store plastic wrapping and bottles till they can find time to go to a recycling centre in another town...cos I am.

Wouldn't it be better to have recycling bins on every road or at least in every estate where we could get rid off plastic packaging, which let's face it...almost every perishable we buy is covered in it...plastic bottles (danone has a lot to answer for) as well as glass bottles. The only bins that are placed in our town are for bottles and cans... so we can assume our Minister for the Environment thinks we do nothing but booze all the time. What about plastic bottles and plastic wrapping Minister!!!

We don't have much storage space in our house at all, no-where to put the hoover, ironing board. So where in God's name are we supposed to store material for recycling till we get an hour to drive down to a recycling centre and back. It gets on my wick sometimes...:mad:
 
Hear hear. I believe that Oxegen have plans to increase collections to every two weeks and will be taking plastic which'll be great. Not sure when thats to roll out.

Recycling bins in estates and on roads is a great idea and you see it in other European countries but can you imagine it here? The bins would be broken, set on fire, rammed into cars etc...
 
In Drogheda the local bottle banks also have a container for plastic bottles (we didn't have a local recycliing facility until mid-2006). They're frequently full though (blame Ballygowan!)

Regarding vandalism, when I lived in Leixlip, the glass bottle banks in my local shopping centre car park were regularly turned over....what a mess!
 
It's an awful shame when you can't benefit from recycling because there are people who think nothing of destroying it for everyone else...doesn't say much for society these days...but that's a whole other rant.

The worst that happens in our town is that people leave bags of rubbish beside the recycling bins and dotted alongside the roads too. Which isn't great either...
 
Recycling is the final option in the 'reduce, reuse, recycle' mantra for good reason. It is not a panacea to our waste management problems. Increased collections and increased availability of recycling allows us to avoid 'reduce/reuse' options. The tongue-in-cheek comment about Danone having a lot to answer for is very telling. Until consumers start buying the products with least/no packaging, Danone will still keep the advertising-laden packaging in place

Having said that, we are finding the twice-weekly recycling collection (including plastics) from Panda very useful.
 
I did actually try to email Danone as they were using three types of wrapping...cardboard over the 8 bottles, then separate cardboard over 4 of bottles in the same pack and then the plastic bottle themselves. I have yet to hear back from them but I will take this up again when I have more free time. They are really over-doing the packaging :(

we're now buying another brand which uses less packaging...I could live without these yogurt drinks but I think the strong advertising has worked on my husband! :p

But I take your point...reduce and re-use first and foremost. Again, fresh fruit and veg out of supermarket are covered in packaging as is almost anything you buy (perishable goods). Oh hell, everything is! Spent a year trotting down to recycling centre every couple of weeks after moved into new house...cardboard, plastic off appliances etc. Why couldn't the companies covering electric cookers etc be made to produce packaging in such a way that it could be re-used by them for the next cooker. Suppose that's never going to happen unless they are heavy incentives.
 
"I could live without these yogurt drinks but I think the strong advertising has worked on my husband!"

I am not at all sold on the health benefits of most of these drinks (and yes, we buy them too....). They all seem murderously sweet. Ditto, indeed, for the petit-filou type products.

Is anyone aware of any research or independent (even quasi-independent) commentary on the virtues of these products?

Incidentally, does anybody make yogurt at home anymore? (I must admit we haven't bothered for years - yet another reason to feel like an inadequate parent.......)
 
While we're having a mini recycling rant, here's my contribution.

If something goes wrong with white goods, the dilema always presents itself;

1. It's now 'free' to dispose of the old product
2. An engineer is going to charge €€€ for a call out and (maybe) fix the apparatus
3. A new one only costs €€€ and will be newer than the old, repaired one, and will last longer.

As a result, people are throwing away white goods with not too much wrong with them. For example, a washing machine. This is essentially a motor, a PCB, a drum, drive belt, and a couple of lumps of concrete. This should last 20+ years.


'Green' cars.
Building and destroying a car creates a huge environmental footprint. It stands to reason that the longer a car is on the road, the more friendly to the environment it becomes. Why then does the government foster an attitude of scrapping cars? (NCT, scrappage deals etc) We have a nissan micra that will probably outlast us. However it has failed the NCT on minor stuff which has no bearing on the safety of the car. Does this not encourage people to prematurely scrap cars instead of repairing them?

Fewer stitches, more riches.
 
micamaca said:
...almost every perishable we buy is covered in it...plastic bottles (danone has a lot to answer for)
Click to expand...

When I go to the supermarket I remove all the excess packaging and leave it behind me...e.g. removing plastic lids on top of yoghurt foil seals, cardboard sleeves that bind 6 packs of yogurts, plastic advertising wrapped around "special offers", frozen pizzas from their boxes, I've even been know to remove cornflakes from the boxes !

This passes the recycling (or disposal) onus on to the supermarket who will hopefully pass it back to the producers who may be compelled to produce less - well that's the theory at any rate...

Am I the only nutcase who does this ?
 
gianni said:
When I go to the supermarket I remove all the excess packaging and leave it behind me...e.g. removing plastic lids on top of yoghurt foil seals, cardboard sleeves that bind 6 packs of yogurts, plastic advertising wrapped around "special offers", frozen pizzas from their boxes, I've even been know to remove cornflakes from the boxes !

This passes the recycling (or disposal) onus on to the supermarket who will hopefully pass it back to the producers who may be compelled to produce less - well that's the theory at any rate...

Am I the only nutcase who does this ?
Click to expand...


Well I never! What a novel idea. I suppose though if we all took that route, it would make shopping more unpleasant than ever. But yes, it might cause the supermarkets to curtail the packaging. Interesting...I might just start with the yogurt drinks and work my way up to the cornflakes :D
 
umop3p!sdn said:
Does this not encourage people to prematurely scrap cars instead of repairing them?
Click to expand...

Indeed it does. Not a very sustainable way of living but great news if you happen to be in the business of either:

a) Selling new cars
b) collecting massive amounts of tax to 'register' said cars
 
If you're worried about excessive and envionmentally unfriendly packaging on the yogurt front - glenisk yogurts have a cardbord surround on the pot instead of printed plastic and it is designed to come off very easily and can be recylced, I think the pot can be recycled too.
 
gianni said:
When I go to the supermarket I remove all the excess packaging and leave it behind me...e.g. removing plastic lids on top of yoghurt foil seals, cardboard sleeves that bind 6 packs of yogurts, plastic advertising wrapped around "special offers", frozen pizzas from their boxes, I've even been know to remove cornflakes from the boxes !

This passes the recycling (or disposal) onus on to the supermarket who will hopefully pass it back to the producers who may be compelled to produce less - well that's the theory at any rate...

Am I the only nutcase who does this ?
Click to expand...

Fair play I think that's a good idea especially the pizza box one and I will definitely do this for cereals as I go through lidl wellness flakes at an unbelievble rate. Someone wrote about fresh fruit and veg out of supermarket being packaged . ..I don't think it is - I rarely bother with those little plastic bags unless I'm buying a load of tomatoes or something. Processed meals are the worst I think, in their plastic trays and cardboard boxes.
 
MOB said:
I am not at all sold on the health benefits of most of these drinks (and yes, we buy them too....). They all seem murderously sweet. Ditto, indeed, for the petit-filou type products.

Is anyone aware of any research or independent (even quasi-independent) commentary on the virtues of these products?
Click to expand...

"L. CASEI IMUNITASS®
Probiotic organism
Studies show that this can help to combat diarrhoea in children, and disease causing bacteria such as E. coli (in mice). In people, unpublished studies show a small boost in immune function...........

While it’s clear that probiotic drinks like this don’t carry the range of carcinogens, neurotoxins and reproductive toxins that usually feature in the products in this column (unless they are sweetened with artifi cial sweeteners), neither is there any evidence that they will do any genuine good, especially for those on an already healthy diet."
(Source: [broken link removed])

For a seemingly more detailed research paper on this subject see [broken link removed]

However, from my very light reading it seems the evidence is inconclusive and that any potential benefit gained by consuming probiotic drinks is negated if the drink has a high sugar content.
 
gianni said:
When I go to the supermarket I remove all the excess packaging and leave it behind me...
Click to expand...

What happens when you get to the checkout? How do staff deal with the items minus their barcodes for scanning? (Takes me back to the first supermarkets -before scanning - when the cry went up at the checkout: "Delorays - hew much is dem cansa pee-as?" :D
 
AlastairSC said:
What happens when you get to the checkout? How do staff deal with the items minus their barcodes for scanning?
Click to expand...
and as they are probably members of Repak and therefore don't have to take back excess packaging why don't they tell you to take your own litter home and get rid of it yourself?
 
managed to talk my husband out of continuing to drink little yogurt drinks...a small victory but am pleased. Am fed up washing out those yokes and am sure there are dubious benefits from them. And really for the amout of drink in them, it's a shame to produce a plastic bottle for that.

You can buy an oul tablet at the chemist for those healthy bacteria anyho.
How did people function without all this stuff years ago...oh yeah...they ate fresh healthy food and didn't spend two to three hours in a car everyday... the price of progress :(
 
micamaca said:
You can buy an oul tablet at the chemist for those healthy bacteria anyho.
Click to expand...

Which tablets are those?

I really think those yogurt drinks marketed as healthy are way tooo sweet to be as healthy as they should be.
 
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