We had a friend over yesterday who we haven’t seen for ages, and he now works at the management level of recycling for the council.We were putting out our rubbish for recycling and he said not to bother with the tetrapaks as they can’t be recycled - there is nowhere in this country that can do them. I said that I was sure he was wrong as our council made a big deal of telling us that they were now recyclable, just a couple of years ago. He was absolutely adamant that they couldn’t be, and said that as councils got paid for the weight of recycling *collected* it was in their interest to collect non-recyclables, because they would be paid more. So, even if stuff gets landfilled or incinerated after processing, councils still get paid for it!
He also said that small stuff just falls through the gaps on the sorting machines, and anything that does is incinerated, which is why shredded paper is “non-recyclable”. If you have small recycleable stuff, like shredded paper, put it inside a large recepticle of the same type (eg, milk bottle tops in plastic cartons, shredded paper in paper bags) and it will then get recycled.
Couldn’t believe that councils are being paid for recycling when they are actually just burning or landfilling though!
ugh makes me very cross if thats true, my cupboard is always stuffed with tetrapaks falling out at me, as they have to wait for me to go to a particluar place as they dont go out with our normal stuff!
wouldnt surprise me tho
I know that not all councils do what they say they will with recycling, and some is incinerated or sent to landfill. However, tetra pak’s are recyclable, even if at present the collected tetra paks are exported for recycling (like many other things) but I believe trials are happening in the UK at mills (but someone may correct me on that one).
I got in touch with our local council last year to check out about tetrapaks. The guy told me that there was only one place in the country recycling them - in Scotland, so balance up the environmental cost of sorting it, transporting it up there… Does the balance pay off? ( I lived in Suffolk at the time)
He did say that the council didn’t advertise that they recycled tetrapak as they had to pay for the transport - so not cost effective for them.
The debate continues. Try to do the right thing, eh?
I think this is why we need to look hard at what we produce full stop, whether it be recyclable or not. We should just use less of everything, says she who is can’t fit all the recycling into the standard wheelie bin at the moment (my excuse is a lot of decluttering taking place!)
I think this is why we need to look hard at what we produce full stop, whether it be recyclable or not. We should just use less of everything, says she who is can’t fit all the recycling into the standard wheelie bin at the moment (my excuse is a lot of decluttering taking place!)
That’s the answer definitely. We’re moving further and further away from packaging that we can’t recycle ourselves or that isn’t easily recyclable in the UK. Personally I don’t buy anything in tetrapaks due to the way they are recycled at present, either transported miles in the UK or shipped abroad.
At our MRF (Materials Recycling Facility) which I visited recently (I am a council Waste Prevention Advisor) the tetrapaks are seperated and bundled with paper to sell to paper mills. Every area is different, there are many different grades of recycleable materials so it is not true to say no tetrapaks can be recycled, some paper mills do accept them- it all depends what the are making and how they make it. The council’s contracted recycling sorting facilities make money from selling the recyclables- it makes no sense for them to burn or landfill anything they can make money from. Landfill costs them a lot of money in landfill tax.
Small stuff does fall through the gaps in the rotating trommells/drums which sort the rubbish (I have seen them working at the MRF). This is only a problem with MIXED recycling. If you put paper in a ‘papar/card only’ skip at the local tip/recycling facility you CAN put in shredded paper as it will not go through a sorting trommel (no need as it is all paper already). For mixed recycling do put shredded paper inside a paper bag and tin foil bits inside an alu can. DO NOT put milk bottle tops in any recycling, unless you particularly have that facility as it is very rare to be able to recycle bottles tops as they are a different type of plastic.
Thank you for all the insider info. Our recycling is a bit random here and some weeks they take certain plastics and other weeks they all get left in the box. I’m guessing it depends on how strict or informed the person collecting is. I’m surprised by tetrapaks though. I know that it was several years ago when Scotland was the only place that could recycle them, but I would have thought that would have improved by now. We have a specific tetrapak recycling bin nearby, but last time I went to our local tip I was told to just stick them in with the cardboard, which I thought was a bit of a turnaround. Now I’m guessing it might have been to bulk up the weight. We don’t actually use many, but it’s hard to get away from them as DS drinks goat’s milk that comes in a tetrapak. I’ll use the specific bin in future though and hope it gets sent to the right place.
Thanks Moggy thats a really helpful post - our council has fairly recently started recycing tetrapaks which we put in with the paper so that fits in with what you say.
Interesting about milk bottle tops - our friend said that the reason any bottle tops are discouraged is because screwed on bottle tops prevent the bottles being crushed, not because the tops weren’t recyclable (he said that was the biggest misconception in recycling!). As long as the bottle tops are not screwed on and are contained in a seperate plastic container, he says it’s fine to put them in the recycling.
Interesting about milk bottle tops - our friend said that the reason any bottle tops are discouraged is because screwed on bottle tops prevent the bottles being crushed, not because the tops weren’t recyclable (he said that was the biggest misconception in recycling!). As long as the bottle tops are not screwed on and are contained in a seperate plastic container, he says it’s fine to put them in the recycling.
Angie
another reason they do not want bottle tops on the bottles is that some people put in half full bottles of cola etc which cause an awful mess at the recycling plant when they are crushed so by saying ‘lids must be off’ then they hope to avoid that.
Whether they can recycle the caps at all depends on what that particular recycling plant has a market for and therefore what they want to collect. Here in West Sussex they do not recycle plastic bottle caps, in other area they may do.
Just to add to this. We saw a ‘reduce reuse recycle’ bus today and went on to talk to the ‘recycling gurus’ and I put the question to them - given a choice of containers to buy which are most easily/locally recyclable and which use least amount of energy to recycle so overall are better to by. They concluded that tin and plastic are the best, but by far tin. Apparently we have too much glass so most is shipped overseas for recycling, whereas tin and plastic are done within the UK. they also said that a lot of glass is lost during the recycling process compared to tin and plastic.
Any thoughts on this? It appears to differ by area which makes figuring out the answer pretty tricky…. and that’s before you get involved in thinking about the initial production!!!
there is a tetrapak plant in somerset who then send them to holland, its just because they are made up of three different componants it makes it difficult and expensive to break up. they are not just paper or card so sending them with the paper stream of watse i would suspect is not the best idea.
some councils are doing it, mine is but the town up the road 30 mins away is a different authority and does not!!!
tin,well mining is really bad on the environment, paper mills use loads of water and plastic is oil!!!!! recyled cardboard can be assembled in the UK and the original wood can come from sustainable sources within the uk! that might be an answer?
plus it all comes down to reducing, recycliing should be a last resort
presure needs to be put on maufactures to reduce pakaging and consumers need to be educated about the benefits and needs. hell dont even give the masses a choice, government needs to say sorry no more clingywrap!! deal with it!!
oh and on the councils get paid for all rubbish incinerated or landfilled or anything (from the first post) i think your friend needs to check that out as local authoritys havae to pay gate fees to who ever is collecting and disposing of the waste to what ever end be that Anarobic digestion, in vessal composting or landfill and most definately not the other way round. the weight of waste going to landfill is weighed and not classed by volume thats why heavy things like glass are the most economic thing for councils to remove from the landfill stream plus there are big targets set for the reduction of watse to landfill set out by the EU and if local authoritys do not reach targets they are fined. targets are also set for removing biodegradable waste from the watse steam so easyest way to do this is by removing the food waste hence why we nearly all have a compost caddy. your friend needs to do a bit more research by the sounds of it! its a bit worrying if hes in your council doing stuff on the whole 3 Rs thing!!
No, he was saying that councils get paid by gross weight of recycling, not for putting things into landfill! The problem is that by paying for the *gross* weight rather than the net weight (after non-recyclables have been taken out), it rather encourages councils to claim that they can recycle things they can’t, providing the recycling incentive fee is more than or equivelent to the landfill
tax.
It sounds like councils have simply found a loophole and are exploiting it.
sorry iam getting confused! does your council put everything into one big bin then? because our recycling goes to one place and our black bags go to a completely different site so i dont see how they can weigh it all together and get paid for it all? and tetrapaks dont weigh that much so that would hardly make a difference. iam sorry i just dont get how they can be being paid for recycling and then putting it into landfill. i dont see how that system would work!
oh are you saying that they weigh the recycling first and then take out the things like tetrapaks??
if so, dob them in!!
ugh makes me very cross if thats true, my cupboard is always stuffed with tetrapaks falling out at me, as they have to wait for me to go to a particluar place as they dont go out with our normal stuff!
