Recycling and all that.
Yes, I know! I’ve touched on this subject before but following on from Monday’s recycling collection (or lack of it as it turns out) I am going to have another rant. Please don’t get me wrong dear readers, I am all for recycling to cut down on waste, but…….. most of the items that I end up sorting into my various receptacles are either not produced by myself nor requested either, and most are unnecessary waste produced by others. And I could argue that years ago, the majority of it wouldn’t be refuse needing to be sorted because it would have been disposed of on the open fires we all used to have. Remember?
Of course, we didn’t have all the flyers, stickers, bulk mail and dross coming through our letterboxes in those days. Only items you received through your letterbox were letters. (shock/horror!) Nowadays, most of my post goes straight into the green recycle paper bag. So the bulk of the paper recycling that I tend to do is not mine, nor was it requested to be delivered to my premises. Which brings me sharply to the incident that provoked this rant. Cardboard, different thickness’s thereof. It states in our very detailed recycling instructions for our area and I quote,
Now it just so happened that last week I had received a package which contained cardboard. It wasn’t too thick (well, not in my opinion) but it was corrugated. I forgot that this is not permitted to be placed in your green bag, and of course, when I went out later to put all the receptacles away, it had been discarded by the recycled guys. So its now had to go into the black dustbin bag instead. It’s not all that long ago that we all received a flyer through the door (to add to the recycling of course) reminding us all that we were not sorting things out correctly and that far too many households were putting things into their dustbins that rightly belonged in the recycle containers instead, which were then adding to the mountainous piles of refuse on the councils tips.
What I want to know is why? Why can’t corrugated thick cardboard be recycled? Or Hardback books and wax crayons, yet a great big thick tomb such as a telephone directory can? Which reminds me I have one or two of those to recycle. 
According to the powers that be, we were encouraged to refrain from having our open coal fires because they were ‘contributing to global warming’ via the smoke they emitted but does anyone know whether or not global warming has actually decreased since we all stopped using open fires? Of course modern houses are no longer built with chimneys included for an open fire so for most of us we no longer have a choice in the matter. But was it a decision that has proved to be a good one in the long term? How much money does all this recycling cost? How many miners lost their jobs through the decision to move away from domestic open coal fires? Okay we know that coal wouldn’t have lasted forever, but neither will oil and yet I see no visible reduction in that items use, nor its contribution via car exhausts to global warming, do you? And don’t get me on the subject of packaging! That’s another waste by the manufacturing sector that is largely unnecessary and yet goes completely unchecked, and the subject of another rant no doubt in a later post.
TG 
Hiya T.G. You made some salient points there. I can easily see why you are so cross. Hope you have calmed down now and are enjoying the rest of your day. Take care. Pen.
ReplyDeleteYesterday, a semi truck overturned on the freeway nearby, shutting down traffic for several hours. (Semi-do you use that term-they're the biggest trucks of all) Turns out, it contained 40,000 pounds of junk mail for a local store chain. 40,000 pounds! That's just one truck and one store. A little piece of me smiled.
ReplyDeletePenny I think it does you good to rant occasionally and I haven't had a good one for a while, so I felt it was due.
ReplyDeleteDave, I think you are referring to what we call artics (short for articulated) where the cab part is hooked up to the container or body part.
Well, it doesn't surprise me in the least about it being full of so much junk. It's probably the same over here. Was it windy? It would have been blowing about all over the carriageway if so!
A good bit of table thumping does no harm once in a while. I rather like a coal fire/home incinerator unit when I do occasionally see them.
ReplyDeleteOh I know global warming is not desirable, but it's not what I thought when I wandered out into this mornings weather.
A friend sent me an e-mail that I find devilishly clever. A lot of the junk mail we get comes with postage paid return envelopes. After making sure our names aren't included we stuff junk mail from other sources into the envelopes and send the junk mailers our junk mail. I cackle like a lunatic at the thought of them having to pay for the privilege of getting the junk I would normally toss out. You see, they only pay postage on the envelopes returned to them. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
ReplyDeleteMan the barricades!! No, seriously, this issue gets a lot of people going. There's just so much inconsistency.
ReplyDeleteHello Technogran, Recycling is a good thing, although here we pay fees & taxes for recycling & I don't think any of us really know where the money goes!?
ReplyDeleteRocket Man, that is a great idea, I think I'll start doing that myself, well over half of our mail is junk!
Michael
Thanks all of you for you kind comments.
ReplyDeleteSandy, I always seem to be table bashing these days, I'v turned into a right grumpy old so and so! ;)
Rocket Man, good idea! I might try that out!
Fran. Yes I do think I am not alone in my thoughts on the subject.
Light in a box, yes, we never really get any feedback do we about how much money our recycling saves everyone.
recycling should be made easy for everyone, more would do it. We are bless in our little town as we have a very enviromentally consious group here. I am going to do a blog some day on our dump where they recyle items that can be resold well as metal, batteries, oil, cans, glass, papers, plastics of certain types, milk jugs and all cardboards. Its convient right near town so I just stop on the way in. As for junk mail, last year when I went south I had them put a hold on all junk mail. When I came back I just never took the hold off. So I don't have all the extra paper to deal with. Also as I only go to town once a week, my mail box is nolonger jamed packed with junk mail. My only rant is I wish the manufactors of all yogurt containers would use the same plastic as the lids which our dump does reycle. I have kept many for growing containers, but you can only use so many.
ReplyDelete