Household rubbish!

[Guest]

Unfortunately Jakko the government have not been hard enough and the super markets have been supplying items in film that is not recycled.

That’s why around here, there are bins for plastic used for packaging.

Why on earth do they shrink wrap for example cucumbers, and appes in packs of 4. Is this allowed in the Netherlands ?

Not sure, but I think so — however, manufacturers who use plastic packaging pay money for that plastic to be recycled (see above).

That, though, leads to the “problem” that people put all sorts of softish plastic into the recycling bins, not just packaging. The idea is that only plastic packaging material, like wrappers etc., go into that. However, pretty much nobody knows that’s the way it’s supposed to work, and even though I do know, frankly, I feel no qualms at all about having manufacturers pay for recycling of stuff they didn’t produce.

Only recently Walkers crisps were forced to find a recycling company to take their crisp pkts.

That kind of packaging isn’t recycled here. The plastic recycling programme does make clear that metallicised plastic, like crisp packets, shouldn’t go in with the rest exactly because of that metal coating. However, the vast majority of our non-recyclable waste is disposed of by burning in a power plant, so it’s not like millions of crip packets will be polluting the landscape for centuries to come.

[Peter Gillson]

Mass Burn incineration was twice rejected locally and 6 months of Public consultation resulted in a high recycling strategy.

Currently glass is either crushed and used locally as hard core (classed as recylcing) or sent to the UK for recycling. plastisc, paper and card are sent to the uk for recycling. Food waste is collected and shipped to the to be recycled as compost while general 'black bag' waste is shipped to the UK and the onto Sweden to be incinerated.

Strange how things change - a few years ago when we were considering an incinerator it would have generated some electricity as a by-produce and that was deemed to be unacceptable and not a form of recycling. Now if an incinerator has an ability to generate energy it can be described as an energy from waste plant and classed as recycling!

I mustadmit that although seperating waste into the different types at home is a pain, it does make you focus on the waste we generate. In our house it is mainly plastisc and paper.

Peter