What happens to all the recycled materials, that we put in our green bins etc, I know paper is made into toilet roll, and paper pellets etc, but what do they do with glass, other than turn into glass again, and where do all the tin cans go ? I’m not a fan of recycling plastic, after seeing it being shipped to China, and being processed, in the un greenest way possible. 
paper is made back into news paper, cardboard is processed back to orginal, glass is reprocessed back to new or ground down and used in road surfaces and other products, there is a new process coming on line to turn some plastic into fuel oil but that is in its early stages, I think sita have a small plant in Aovnmouth trying it at the moment. 
Our district recycle flyaway plastic or so the council tells us. It’s ■■■■■■■■, they ask for you to bag it separate from plastic bottles so’s not to contaminate it. They don’t recycle it they bale it for landfill at the contractors’ yard because (being Camerons’) constituency it doesn’t look good to ask for “recyclable” material to be binned. Iknow this goes on as I did some agency work for them last year and the supervisor said it couod go for recycling but there was no money in it.
Oxfordshire is getting an “energy from waste” plant (incinerator) this year, so technically non recyclable materials will be recyclable.
One thing that I find funny; It’s meant to be bad to bury stff in tips because of the gas produced, so they tell you to compost it. Which is the same but in the open air, and then scattering it on top of the soil rather than under it. 
i live on the edge of my council border, but border 2 others with a 3rd close by, what confuses the hell out of me is why each council as different rules for what goes in what bin ect but it all seems to go to the same place? we get told to bag certain items however they are collected in a normal bin truck with a compactor on the back so surely the items get mixed and bags ripped…
Top observation there, Muckaway.
Where it should be going is into a methane digester…which would reduce it to compost and capture the methane gas given off, which can be used in pace of natural ‘fossil fuel’ gas to heat buildings etc.
But if you make a proposal to build a methane digester…which actually creates fuel from rubbish…you get a load of ‘environmental’ objections…which under examination usually translate into ‘this will harm the value of my very expensive country house which I bought as an investment with all the money I made in London’.
In my view…central government should actually require every local authority to build a methane digester to handle all or most compostible waste produced in the area. The fuel gas created could be fed into the national ‘gas grid’ or used by the local authority to power municipal vehicles (dustcarts, school buses etc). They already do this in France.
The compost could be sold/given away to gardeners and farmers.
The technology exists to do all this already…I’ll leave you to guess why this isn’t already happening.
You forgot this forum… where MMTM bull ■■■■ is recycled into fact on a daily basis. 
Here’s another recycling con trick; Sending out crushed stone as ■■■■■■■■ or crushed concrete. This avoids paying mineral tax.
Recycled topsoil con; Some sites specify “certified topsoil” which means lab tested for any contamination. Normally certified is loaded from same pile as ordinary stuff, but by certifying it means charging an extra couple of quid per tonne or load.
dle1uk:
what confuses the hell out of me is why each council as different rules for what goes in what bin ect but it all seems to go to the same place?
I suspect it’s different councils, different contracts!
A fair amount of the recycle materials gets sent back to China…
I sent the last few of my years as an O/D on containers, a lot of our work was collecting baled waste for shipping to China, how green was that■■? Infact one of the major companies collecting, processing and exporting this waste sent it to their own plants in China. Also exported in very large quantities are scrap metals, copper,brass, aluminium etc. Regards Kevmac47.
Apparently sending our waste to China has a near zero carbon footprint, we buy so much stuff from them, the ships need to either take our waste or ballast!
We have those rubbish ( ) “pigeon hole” recycling trucks where the crews park up and hand sort the recycling boxes into compartments. Apparently to appease Camerons council cronies because it looks better than throwing it all into a dustcart and tipping the lot at a waste transfer station. Which over Xmas is exactly what they do to save time. I do laugh at all the do gooders on our streets that have a recycling box for every kind of waste yet not one box is heavy enough to stop it blowing down the road in windy weather. I fill a box up before starting with another and make the buggers sort it themselves. Gets on my ■■■■ that I’m expected to sort the waste for them, after all they’re the “waste collection operatives” and not me.
dle1uk:
i live on the edge of my council border, but border 2 others with a 3rd close by, what confuses the hell out of me is why each council as different rules for what goes in what bin ect but it all seems to go to the same place? we get told to bag certain items however they are collected in a normal bin truck with a compactor on the back so surely the items get mixed and bags ripped…
different councils collect and sort in different ways, some hand sort before loading into separate compartments on the truck and then tip each compartment separately back at base, some use a 2 compartment compactor or even a single compartment compactor and the sort it through a mrf plant
the Chinese are taking less now unless it is of high quality, as they got fed up being send crap and then having to landfill it 
Recycle the glass and cans and the rest burn in power stations.
Recycling the biggest con out. We used to recycle things years ago glass bottles were reused not smashed and remade, and we used to get money back on some plus we didnt have all this plastic use once and throw away we waste more these days than we ever did. If you go abroad they dont use as much plastic, paperbags is the norm which breaks down nicely. As for being a leader in this sort of thing, when wheelie bins came out in Oxofrdshire where I used to live there was a big thing about them, when i was young we lived in Germany in the 60,s (dad was in the services) and we had wheelie bins then. I have also done agency work for recycling companies and its quite scary what goes into landfill despite what you get told. And i still cant see how its good for the environment. All those cars going to the recycling centres all in a que all with there engines running, the fumes! oh but thats ok its not going to land fill. Like i say biggest con out and we have to pay for it.
I used to collect plastics from public sites for recycling & one particular event sticks in my mind.
Whilst emptying a bin in a community car park in deepest rural Sussex, I was tapped on the shoulder by non other than Sir Paul McCartney & his one legged Heather , out doing their weekly shopping trip I no doubt !
I switched the noisy suction fan off & gave them both my best attention, I recognised him almost instantly being a BIG Beatles fan, but didn’t want to mention that I’d been ogling Heathers arse in her TIGHT jeans for the past 5mins while she chucked all their MDPE in the bin.
He seemed to be very interested in what happened to the plastics after they’d thrown them in the bin & it fair broke my heart to tell him the truth.
You have to accept that only non thinking people think that recycling is all about chucking your waste into a particular bin.
I told him that at that time, it was only viable to compact & bale the plastics, then chuck them in a shipping container for transit all around the world to China. Where they would be dumped on a tax free landfill site where very, very poor people would then scavenge the tip for any particular plastics that were actually & viably recyclable, for a pittance.
This is a scenario that competes with certain ‘Benelux’ countries who are enlightened enough to recycle their plastics by burning them in power stations to recover some of the energy expended in their manufacture. Sometimes it goes Belgium, sometimes it goes China.
This, no doubt, shatters the glass of belief that is your average amateur environMENTALists solo brain cell.
I know that it shattered his particular perception of recycling, because he just stood there in front of me with his jaw almost on the floor, but that could’ve been because I also gave him a bad time about releasing herds of dairy cattle to die a painful death & not to mention the wild pigs tear arseing about the place, breaking innocent walkers legs !
now let’s see what we can make out of the plastic we recycle…
how about plastic wheelie bins and plastic recycling tubs ■■.. and, traffic cones, YES blooming traffic cones.
keep it up folks, we really need more of those… ,
I work in a place that recycles everything, cardboard back on the shelves inside 6 weeks, plastic packaging reused, bread waste turned into animal feed meat waste burned to produce electricity food waste turned into compost etc.
The big companies know in the old adage, where there’s muck there’s brass. nothing is thrown away.
mike68:
I work in a place that recycles everything, cardboard back on the shelves inside 6 weeks, plastic packaging reused, bread waste turned into animal feed meat waste burned to produce electricity food waste turned into compost etc.The big companies know in the old adage, where there’s muck there’s brass. nothing is thrown away.
Take some time out to discover the truth about paper & recycling.
Paper comes from wood pulp & there’s only so many times that wood pulp can be recycled. About 4x IIRC.
Cardboard isn’t the last time that wood pulp can be recycled, I think that honour goes to egg trays, but cardboard is only one step above it.
Your bread waste isn’t fed to any animal on my families farming interests, where does that come from?
Likewise your meat waste burned to produce elecktrickery, you do know that the meat that you eat is 95% water don’t you?
What food waste is turned into compost? Where do they do this & how?
The only food waste that I know of that ends up back on the land, comes out of your bottom after being processed by your digestive system.
Where exactly is it that you work? I can only think that it might be one of those places that started to believe its own ■■■■■■■■ propaganda surrounding recycling !
I’d better not bother going to work tomorrow, got a load of baled tissue paper on to go into West Brom for recycling, then down to Oxford for baled card, I’ve obviously wasted the last few years of my life collecting baled plastics and card from Council depots all over the country and taking then to factories where they are processed into new plastic!
Chas:
mike68:
I work in a place that recycles everything, cardboard back on the shelves inside 6 weeks, plastic packaging reused, bread waste turned into animal feed meat waste burned to produce electricity food waste turned into compost etc.The big companies know in the old adage, where there’s muck there’s brass. nothing is thrown away.
Take some time out to discover the truth about paper & recycling.
Paper comes from wood pulp & there’s only so many times that wood pulp can be recycled. About 4x IIRC.
Cardboard isn’t the last time that wood pulp can be recycled, I think that honour goes to egg trays, but cardboard is only one step above it.
Your bread waste isn’t fed to any animal on my families farming interests, where does that come from?
Likewise your meat waste burned to produce elecktrickery, you do know that the meat that you eat is 95% water don’t you?
What food waste is turned into compost? Where do they do this & how?
The only food waste that I know of that ends up back on the land, comes out of your bottom after being processed by your digestive system.
Where exactly is it that you work? I can only think that it might be one of those places that started to believe its own [zb] propaganda surrounding recycling !
The only bread that is recycled for animal feed comes direct from the bakeries as unsold bread