The last blog by Mrs green of Zerowaste.com tells of G H S Recycling, the company who will collect the plastics that local councils cannot accept. However, today, I decided to phone my local council, East Lindsey District Council, to find out their exact policy on plastic collection. To my surprise and delight, it seems that they will now accept ALL types of plastic bottles, as well as yogurt pots and margarine tubs! Terri Gibson, the council's, very helpful and informative Recycling Marketing Officer, told me that many people had become confused by having to sort out different plastics by codes, so ELDC have simplified matters and now accept all plastic bottles. Whilst there are a lot of other plastic materials they still cannot accept, I think this council deserves a lot of credit for their enlightened waste disposal policy. If only all councils were as positive as ours is!
Terri also sent the photos displayed with this piece, showing how the waste is collected, as it arrives from the bins and is put into bails, ready to be sent off to the recycling company.
So all of this means, that we can now happy put the majority of our plastics in the recycling bin, and only send the few odds and ends down to GHS.
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ReplyDeleteYou mentioned in another article about leaving excess packaging at the supermarkets, well, that's a wonderful idea and Lidal and Aldi in Portugal, Spain and Germany provide bins for you to do this, which is great. So customers are able to peel off all their packaging eg, cereal boxes etc, after they have paid for it at the tills, and put it in provided bins.
ReplyDeleteBut my main comment is that none of us would have this recycling/packaging problem if, we didn't manufacture so much tat and rubbish for a living and for profits in the first place. You only have to walk down any high street and see the amount of tat that has been manufactured and is for sale. But there lies the problem, if we stopped manufacturing all this rubbish, then unemployment would rise and that wouldn't do in this capitalist state where everyone has to have employment, regardless of how useless it might be.
The manufacturing of rubbish and tat AND the plethora of jobs that comes with it, the aftermath of it, the talking about, the planning, the recycling of it all creates huge profits and gives us something to do. What would all those unemployed people otherwise do? ...push up unemployment figures! ...we can't have that.
Globalisation departmentalises our thoughts and morals not allowing us to see the whole picture, and so keeping us ignorant and uninformed, which allows all this nonsense to continue unchallenged. When it is challenged, action is slow or ignored, then hindered by "experts" battling it out AND getting nicely paid for it, whilst little or nothing changes.
Sadly, I think changes will only be made if they create profits for someone or some company.
This system is against life. It is a system for using living things, to create capital. To do this it must turn human beings into producing and consuming devices that serve the needs of capital rather than the needs of human life. The environment provides the raw material for the machine, to be processed and transformed into profit, regardless of the needs of global environmental integrity. Concern for life just does not belong in a profit/growth orientated system. How can it? The logic of profit maximisation in a free market economy dictates that longer term planning is subordinated to the needs of the day, the next month, the next quarter, the next financial year. People are put into place to keep us believing that the system really is on the side of life and that it is for our best interests that it continue this way, the "experts" know what they are doing, Joe Bloggs doesn't. We all need to wake up and see the light. But this will bring big changes, changes many of us don't want to face, because we then become accountable for what we are doing to the planet.
How can it be that Western corporations have sold $300 billion worth of arms over the past 30 years, fuelling the 150 global conflicts at a cost of 22 million lives. How can companies like ICI continue to export ozone-destroyers to the legislation-free and PR safe Third World? How??? These corporations are not for life but for profits as are most other companies in this twisted crazy society.
I could go on......
Cindy
Recycling facilities for plastic are definitely improving. We now have plastic bottles included in our doorstep collection and we can take yoghurt pots and margarine tubs to a local recycling facility. Tetrapaks, which also contain some plastic, can also be taken to a local recycling facility now, which is a good thing, because I never got round to sending mine to the company that would recycle them if you posted them there.
ReplyDeleteNow that's great Karin. I thought our council was one of the top ones, but they don't(as yet) take yogurt pots or tetrapacks. Who is your council? We should all get together and have a vote for the top council re recycling and give them a prize :)
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