Plastic Ban

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Seem to remember hearing that the Chinese are not buying plastic waste from here at the moment, they have large stock piles of it.

At one Hospital that I worked at I was in charge of making up and sterilizing dressing packs etc, I made the cotton buds, wooden stick, cotton wool tip. All the packs were in brown paper bags with a colour stripe to indicate that it had been through the Autoclave. We continued with that system after commercial pre- packed stuff arrived on the scene, This sort of inhouse work stopped when Aids/HIV first appeared in the early 80s.

Ian S C

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

In the past, they had complaints from subscribers about the raised eyebrows of posties delivering magazines in plain brown envelopes

Neil

[Raymond Sanderson 2Participant @raymondsanderson2]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 20/04/2018 09:00:29:

Posted by Raymond Sanderson 2 on 20/04/2018 05:40:32:

Maybe ME & MEW should be posted in one package? Of course this will have to be some material which keep the mags dry and safe.

Then I will get more emails from Ray complaining that both his magazines have gone astray or got soggy, or about the extra delay while ME waits for MEW to be printed

Neil

So how does not using plastic bags make delivery any different on actual arriving? For years people only ever had brown paper bags with such in them.??
Soggy well if the ink is still that wet best find a better printer. OR start loading the digital version as PDF.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Raymond Sanderson 2 on 20/04/2018 22:46:26:

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 20/04/2018 09:00:29:

Posted by Raymond Sanderson 2 on 20/04/2018 05:40:32:

Maybe ME & MEW should be posted in one package? Of course this will have to be some material which keep the mags dry and safe.

Then I will get more emails from Ray complaining that both his magazines have gone astray or got soggy, or about the extra delay while ME waits for MEW to be printed

Neil

So how does not using plastic bags make delivery any different on actual arriving?

Putting two mags in one envelope means one has to wait for the other, at least a week…

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

Mags in plastic bags are one of the few times I don't complain. My post box is a mile round trip away, and in bad weather I don't always get to it. Result is soggy mail. I don't mind for bills and ads., but the mags must get thru'.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Gordon, you'll just have to do as I did last year, build a better mail box.

Didn't hear where, but one city in Australia has given up on separate plastic recycling due to China not taking plastic rubbish any more.

Ian S C

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

Ian- I did build a better mailbox, a little man in a big yellow digger remade it a few days later. Just waiting for all the building work to get finished before I decide on further work. Don't want to upset him as I need my road.

[Raymond Sanderson 2Participant @raymondsanderson2]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 20/04/2018 23:00:24:

Posted by Raymond Sanderson 2 on 20/04/2018 22:46:26:

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 20/04/2018 09:00:29:

Posted by Raymond Sanderson 2 on 20/04/2018 05:40:32:

Maybe ME & MEW should be posted in one package? Of course this will have to be some material which keep the mags dry and safe.

Then I will get more emails from Ray complaining that both his magazines have gone astray or got soggy, or about the extra delay while ME waits for MEW to be printed

Neil

So how does not using plastic bags make delivery any different on actual arriving?

Putting two mags in one envelope means one has to wait for the other, at least a week…

Neil NOT IF editors work together to get them out on time together LOL.

[Raymond Sanderson 2Participant @raymondsanderson2]

Posted by Ian S C on 21/04/2018 12:27:48:

Gordon, you'll just have to do as I did last year, build a better mail box.

Didn't hear where, but one city in Australia has given up on separate plastic recycling due to China not taking plastic rubbish any more.

Ian S C

That was Ipswich where I live now Ian but they have withdrawn that situation rate payers slammed the idea.

Considering plastic bags are made in China also.

Mail box won't be plastic will it Ian?? LOL

[Martin DowingParticipant @martindowing58466]

Posted by Georgineer on 19/04/2018 20:27:04:

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 19/04/2018 12:22:38:

According to BBC News:

Announcing a consultation on a possible ban ministers said 8.5bn plastic straws were thrown away in the UK every year.

Assuming the population is about 70 million, that's three straws per day for every man,woman and child. And somebody must be using six per day, because I haven't used a straw in years.

George

Your maths is off by approximately 1 order of magnitude. More like 0.3 per person per day.

If they want to attack plastic problem, the first place to look at is food packaging industry. For example by setting a standard stating that no more than 0.01% of brutto weight of food can be a plastic.

Return to glass bottles for drinks and force shops by law to accept returns for money deposit. Oblige shops to accept returns without proof of purchase from a given shop. Set a price of bottle high enough to make sure that 95% of consumers pay attention to its value and set final price paid by drink manufacturer for recycled bottle high enough that shops are making profit too. If cheaper to manufacture new than collect recycled, tax new bottles until making new is more expensive. Make unified standard for soft drink bottle, wine bottle etc so they are easy to refill by any manufacturer. The same for jam jars and other common packaging. Permit aluminium for light weight "convenient" drink packaging. It corrodes fast enough and already there is a good incentive to recycle anyway.

Make an exception for biodegradable plastics, eg those easy digestible by microorganisms with environmental halflife less than 6 months or so.

Bans on toothpicks or cotton buds are lipstick on pig but in an era of reign of stupid everything is possible. I wonder when they will legislate in paper condoms.

Martin

Edited By Martin Dowing on 22/04/2018 06:58:06

Edited By Martin Dowing on 22/04/2018 07:03:10

[Barnaby WildeParticipant @barnabywilde70941]

The only truly green product is a product that was not manufactured. This is totally at odds with a capitalist economy & therefore there will never be a truly green product until you tackle the economy.

Collecting plastics & shipping them off to China is not recycling, it is dumping.

[Martin DowingParticipant @martindowing58466]

Posted by Mick Charity on 22/04/2018 07:02:08:

The only truly green product is a product that was not manufactured. This is totally at odds with a capitalist economy & therefore there will never be a truly green product until you tackle the economy.

Collecting plastics & shipping them off to China is not recycling, it is dumping.

Engineering is an art of compromise. Surely we *can* manufacture packaging materials of sufficienty low environmental impact and degradable fast enough not to bother us. Technology *is* there.

Solution for electrosh*t on the other hand could take a form of compulsory manufacturer warranty for 5 or 10 years to legislate out cheap disposable crap. I have TV 30 years old (Sony Black Trinitron). Quality of reception still beats many modern plasmas and LCDs. It have *never* seen service albeit on 1 occassion I have replaced a fuse myself.

I have also several warm light energy saving compact fluorescent bulbs made 20 years ago. They were 10 queeds each at the time but maybe 2 of 20 are blown by now. Current versions won't last more than a year or two.

Martin

[Clive IndiaParticipant @cliveindia]

Put my hand up – I use straws and cotton buds so why should they be phased out because some dispose of them irresponsibly? I recycle where I can, stupidly taking the tops off bottles and saving them for the tip as hard plastic.

One anomaly seems to be expanded polystyrene. Does not get recycled, as far as I know, and probably is considered unimportant because it is less dense (light) and landfill is measured in tonnes. Will this stuff eventually cover the planet? Perhaps it can be burnt?

I went into a local supermarket to buy lemonade – just one type available – but next to 15 different types of water. What's that all about? Surely there is only a need for still and fizzy?
If I had told my grandad that people would pay a quid for a bottle of water it would have shortened his life – by dying of laughter and amazement!

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

We recycled polystyrene into filling for kids toys for a while until we could make a cardboard pack.

Ecofriendly food wrap has been used for aeons in the form of banana leaves which are not edible and cabbage which is.

[Martin DowingParticipant @martindowing58466]

Posted by Clive India on 22/04/2018 10:59:13:

Put my hand up – I use straws and cotton buds so why should they be phased out because some dispose of them irresponsibly? I recycle where I can, stupidly taking the tops off bottles and saving them for the tip as hard plastic.

Buy 100 packets, bar your wife from touching them (if you have a wife) and you have got life long supply. They are cheap enough.

Martin

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

What happened to string bags? Last for years, keep in a pocket, make your own instead of knitting wooly hats.

[Adam MaraParticipant @adammara]

It annoys me that councils have different policies for disposal, the colour of the bin you use for the rubbish varies, my son lives 5 miles outside town, in a different council area, and the non recyclable bin is a different colour to ours, yet our council empties them! Daughter lives in Yorkshire, different again, and when we go to a holiday let in Dorset it is at least the same colour for non recyclables.

We cannot put waxed cartons in our recyclable bin, but when you go to the local tip/dump, sorry recycling centre there is a container for them!

.

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

If I remember rightly there is legislation in Germany that prevents the use of expanded polystyrene as packaging material and also its importation as packaging on products, my grey cells may be playing tricks on me but I remember it being an issue when a company I worked for exported to Germany.

Dave W

[Barnaby WildeParticipant @barnabywilde70941]

Posted by Martin Dowing on 22/04/2018 07:18:00:

Engineering is an art of compromise. Surely we *can* manufacture packaging materials of sufficienty low environmental impact and degradable fast enough not to bother us. Technology *is* there.

Deep down Martin, you know that we can, because that's what we used to do. We used to package our things with a very much lower environmental impact than how we do it today.

What went wrong?

Posted by Martin Dowing on 22/04/2018 07:18:00:

Solution for electrosh*t on the other hand could take a form of compulsory manufacturer warranty for 5 or 10 years to legislate out cheap disposable crap. I have TV 30 years old (Sony Black Trinitron). Quality of reception still beats many modern plasmas and LCDs. It have *never* seen service albeit on 1 occassion I have replaced a fuse myself.

When you begin to understand the modern economy & how it works, then perhaps you'll understand why obsolescence is built into so much of what we buy. It is only when you understand this, & the obstacles they put in our way to stop us understanding this, will you truly understand that if you want to save the planet . . . First you must destroy it.

[Phil WhitleyParticipant @philwhitley94135]

In the seventies (I was young) and used to follow the GP and formula 1 races around Europe. This meant many trips on the cross channel ferries, and I always remember being horrified to see , as two ferries passed mid channel, the stewards emptying all the kitchen and restaurant debris in the drink from the back of the ferry! We should stop making ANYTHING that is "disposable" and instead it should be made illegal to make anything that is not recyclable, and also mandate that recyclable products MUST be recycled. This is not a simple thing however as the energy demand to recycle is often more than is required to manufacture from new raw materials. Virtually all plastics can be recycled into something, but most are not as it simply is not profitable. I have used recycled plastic post and rail fencing, which never rots, never needs painting, and is virtually indistinguishable from wood, the only problem is, it's more expensive than wood! make it cheaper, and every fencing contractor would beat a path to your door, and the incentive to recycle would benefit too. It would be better for local authorities to give away raw materials like polythenes for recycling than put them in landfill. I notice that my local CA site, having had an on/off thing about hard plastics for a few years, now has a permanent hard plastics skip, which is nearly always full, so that must be going for recycling. This has become a major ecological problem, and it needs innovation and cheap energy to tackle it effectively. but tackle it we must!

[Barnaby WildeParticipant @barnabywilde70941]

Posted by Phil Whitley on 22/04/2018 16:32:36:

In the seventies (I was young) and used to follow the GP and formula 1 races around Europe. This meant many trips on the cross channel ferries, and I always remember being horrified to see , as two ferries passed mid channel, the stewards emptying all the kitchen and restaurant debris in the drink from the back of the ferry! We should stop making ANYTHING that is "disposable" and instead it should be made illegal to make anything that is not recyclable, and also mandate that recyclable products MUST be recycled. This is not a simple thing however as the energy demand to recycle is often more than is required to manufacture from new raw materials. Virtually all plastics can be recycled into something, but most are not as it simply is not profitable. I have used recycled plastic post and rail fencing, which never rots, never needs painting, and is virtually indistinguishable from wood, the only problem is, it's more expensive than wood! make it cheaper, and every fencing contractor would beat a path to your door, and the incentive to recycle would benefit too. It would be better for local authorities to give away raw materials like polythenes for recycling than put them in landfill. I notice that my local CA site, having had an on/off thing about hard plastics for a few years, now has a permanent hard plastics skip, which is nearly always full, so that must be going for recycling. This has become a major ecological problem, and it needs innovation and cheap energy to tackle it effectively. but tackle it we must!

You Sir. Are a part of the problem.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Plastic fence will break up in a storm in 15 years when the plasticiser has ebbed away. At least my oak fence could still be used as kindling when 50 years had taken its toll. Safe to burn as oak didn't need treating. Loads of plastic guttering being used, and the rest of the trim, which I think builder would be prepared to pay extra for because the builders know they get the chance to redo it soon enough.

Councils use different bin colours to stop people stealing them to sell to a property developer in another police area. Locally the link would be observed, some distance would cost the thieves too much, so it becomes safe to reuse the style.

[An OtherParticipant @another21905]

Interesting thread. It does seem there are many different policies about how to deal with plastic, but it seems to me that the sheer scale of the problem is an issue. I appreciate that action has to start somewhere, so any local or national action has to be a step forward, but I would think there needs to be international pressure.

I live in eastern europe (about 10 years now), and it is clear there is a major attitude difference here: rubbish can be and is dumped anywhere – there is no education or information about the damage this causes. Although countries like the UK may be taking steps to curtail single-use plastic, such as PET bottles, the manufacturers are increasing their use of them in other countries. Drinkable water is a luxury here, so literally tons of bottled water is sold every day – all in PET bottles. Companies churn out cola, sticky 'fruit' drinks, in fact anything which will go into a bottle, goes into a PET bottle – and its no exaggeration to say most of these end up thrown to the side of the road here. (Rubbish collection is also almost unknown).

We have about 5 acres of land in a remote, rural part of the country, close to a small village of about 800 people. The only 'industry' around here is illegally cutting oak and ash in the State Forest, for shipping to Austria and Hungary. When we bought the land; we spent about a week collecting and removing plastic rubbish left on the land by these wood thieves. About 75% was old PET bottles. We eventually collected 5 full loads in a 1-ton trailer. (I don't have space to tell the story of the trouble it took to get rid of them).

Another point I would like to make: has anyone ever looked at the production of childrens toys? – almost all plastic these days. Not a bad thing that Toys'R Us went bust.

OK – rant over – just wanted to make a point about the scale of the problem

[Martin DowingParticipant @martindowing58466]

Posted by An Other on 22/04/2018 18:54:41:

I live in eastern europe (about 10 years now), and it is clear there is a major attitude difference here: rubbish can be and is dumped anywhere – there is no education or information about the damage this causes. Although countries like the UK may be taking steps to curtail single-use plastic, such as PET bottles, the manufacturers are increasing their use of them in other countries. Drinkable water is a luxury here, so literally tons of bottled water is sold every day – all in PET bottles. Companies churn out cola, sticky 'fruit' drinks, in fact anything which will go into a bottle, goes into a PET bottle – and its no exaggeration to say most of these end up thrown to the side of the road here. (Rubbish collection is also almost unknown).

Hi, I also live in EE (Poland) for sometime and in our local area they have a nice recycling policy.

Local authorities are encouraging residents to segregate plastic by offering 50% discount for refuge collection.

Many of residents are doing it. Then bin men are coming and taking segregated bin only to mix them in the landfill again. Local chancellor is officially happy because EU quotas are satisfied and authority does not pay fines for underrecycling but in private she would admit that entire exercise is a nonsense. There are some hopes that we will be sending it to Ukraine where it is used as a fuel. These are good news but not for Ukraine.

Martin

[An OtherParticipant @another21905]

Hi, Martin,

It sounds as if both our countries have the same problem. Our local council installed large 'wheelie' bins in wire-fenced compounds around the local villages, in an attempt to solve the 'non-rubbish collection' problem. First thing that happened was the wire fencing around the compounds was stolen!

Next most of the plastic wheelie bins disappeared – turned out they were stolen by locals to put rubbish in! No action was ever taken, and no missing bins replaced.

Then the few remaining wheelie bins gradually disappeared under mountains of rubbish. It turned out the council had never arranged any method of emptying them!

This led to complaints from people living near the compounds (who were probably the major users of them), so the councils solution was to remove the bins completely and dismantle the compounds – but they simply left the piles of rubbish where they lay – ain't diversity wonderful?

[Author]

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