Arch, I find this recycling pavlava quite confusing at times. Unless you are in the know, sometimes is really hard to differentiate.
Glass jars: recycle with lid or without? What to do with the lid, then?
Mushroom container from supermarket: is it plastic, cardboard, or what?
At work: put empty glass bottles in glass bin, ok, but why it says on it "no drinking glasses"?
Big cardboard boxes, again from work: should one take the strong parcel tape off, or not?
And so on!
What to do with stuff like: spent brake pads, empty lube spray cans ... a worn freewheel?
Any useful links for environmental friendly disposal of stuff from the expert, please?
BTW, I am doing a decluttering for the new year, found a few "wee" items. My local wee recycling depot has a big sign "no pedestrians" ... wait until I come on the bike with the trailer!
Ah, questions, questions...
Sadly, I can't be definitive for you, because all councils' policies differ (which is annoying, it would make so much more sense if there was one central policy). However, I'll try my best based on our rules... (and to add to the complication, 'we' aren't the council, so our policy differs from City of York). Best really to check with your council.
Glass jars: recycle with lid or without? What to do with the lid, then?
We take them with lids on if people put them out like that. The lids will be removed when the glass is smashed up in the recycling process. Jam Jar lids are steel, so could be put in with tins if you want to get them recycled. Plastic ones we just leave on jars, unless they are coffee lids, see below*
Mushroom container from supermarket: is it plastic, cardboard, or what?
Not sure, containers vary, I'd have to see it. There are quite a lot of compressed card containers for fruit and veg these days, we treat them as cardboard. But plastic trays, or polystyrene, we don't take, see below**
At work: put empty glass bottles in glass bin, ok, but why it says on it "no drinking glasses"?
Drinking glasses have been treated in a different way to bottle glass - they make a different sound when broken. Too much of that sort of glass contaminates the bottle glass and affects the quality of the recycled material. Pyrex is the same.
Big cardboard boxes, again from work: should one take the strong parcel tape off, or not?
We'll take boxes with parcel tape still attached, unless it's been really heavily covered, in which case we'll try and take it off. The real pain is boxes with plastic windows in (like some cakes come in), as that plastic contaminates the cardboard. The even put windows in boxes of Tampax, for goodness sake. If you don't know what a tampon looks like, you really shouldn't be buying them...
What to do with stuff like: spent brake pads, empty lube spray cans ... a worn freewheel?
Brake pads, landfill. Empty spray cans - we'd take them in the household recycling, but some councils won't take aerosols I think. If not, they would be scrap metal, along with the freewheel.
Any useful links for environmental friendly disposal of stuff from the expert, please?
Ideally, your council should be able to advise you, but I know that getting through to councils can be a thankless task - we work for them and we struggle to get info (or our money!) sometimes. Your local tip should have a fairly good variety of skips to allow rubbish to be separated into metals, wood, possibly some plastics etc.
You might find some help here:
http://www.recyclenow.com/
BTW, I am doing a decluttering for the new year, found a few "wee" items. My local wee recycling depot has a big sign "no pedestrians" ... wait until I come on the bike with the trailer!
This is a bugbear. At the York tip, I gather, they'll take stuff from cyclists at the gate - I've never done it myself. As ever, peds and cyclists are excluded mostly because the drivers aren't likely to be paying attention properly.
*We have a special waste stream for coffee jar lids.
Terracycle are an organisation that arrange the recycling of certain materials that wouldn't otherwise get recycled, sponsored by the manufacturers. We collect Actimel bottles and coffee packaging and get paid for them - it's open to any group who want to collect for a charity.
**Plastic is a minefield. We at
St Nicks only take 'bottles' - pop, milk, shampoo, washing up liquid etc. We don't take plastic food trays, tupperware, yoghurt and marg tubs, film wrapping etc. This is because bottles tend to be a 'pure' plastic (type 1 or 2), whereas the others are polymers of different plastics, and are harder or impossible to recycle. We'd just have to put them in our landfill bin. However where the council operate, they take all plastics mingled, and they get sorted at a plant - the recyclable stuff is extracted and the rest landfilled. This gives people the impression that the council recycle all plastic, when they don't - in fact if a batch is very contaminated, the whole lot just goes into landfill anyway. We feel our way is more honest. We sort all our materials at the kerbside by hand, which means we get a higher quality (and therefore more valuable) product to sell to our merchants.
Lots of plastics say "recyclable where facilities exist" which is a handy get out, because facilities simply may not be exist locally or within economic distance. Tetra-paks for example, are a composite of card, foil and plastic. They can be recycled - but there's currently no plant in the UK that does it. They have to be shipped to Germany or Sweden.
It is tricky, thanks to all the variations around the country, but some people seem to go out of their way to find it harder than it is! We deliver leaflets reminding our households what we take a couple of times a year (eg, with the letter detailing the changes to collections at Christmas) and we often find the leaflet thrown out the next week, in a box full of unrecyclable rubbish.
