Metal vs Plastic.

Latest Articles

Metal vs Plastic.
Page 1, 2 Next

Downsizer Forum Index -> Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Author

Message

Hairyloon

Joined: 20 Nov 2008
Posts: 15425
Location: Today I are mostly being in Yorkshire.

Posted: Tue Apr 01, 14 9:30 am Post subject: Metal vs Plastic.

People are so keen to recycle metal that some will go out and steal it, often before it is ready to recycle. There is no shortage of places you can go to exchange metal for money; they even advertise it on the wireless.

Last I checked, weight for weight, plastic was more valuable than iron, yet I am yet to find anywhere sensible to weigh it in: I've found a couple of places on t'internet, but they were so unhelpful that I got discouraged.

Why is this, and what can we do about it?

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46192
Location: yes

Posted: Tue Apr 01, 14 9:39 am Post subject:

metal is easy to sort into type mixed plastic is not
plastics such as polythene will remelt but it must be clean and shredded stuff such as electrical plugs or pooter cases wont

so unless you have only one sort ,bale wrap or the big water cooler bottles for instance,it is not profitable to recycle

another factor is a lot of plastic is food use and recycle is not on the approved list

there are a few uses such as mixed plastic construction board and park benches that heat treat mixed to melt it into a lump but they are not commonly used

new pellet in a sack is much easier to make things from

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15950

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 14 6:51 am Post subject:
It shouldn't be possible to recycle metal so easily now as all scrap merchants have to put the money into the bank account of the person bringing in the scrap and should be regularly checked by the police. You do say weight for weight. A ton of most plastics is an awful lot of plastic and far less volume for metal.

Hairyloon

Joined: 20 Nov 2008
Posts: 15425
Location: Today I are mostly being in Yorkshire.

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 14 7:38 am Post subject:

Mistress Rose wrote:

How does that make it harder to recycle? It's barely even a token effort to try and cut down theft.[/quote]

Quote:

You do say weight for weight. A ton of most plastics is an awful lot of plastic and far less volume for metal.

Do you not know anyone who saves up tin cans and weighs them in? It is not uncommon; I've heard of charity groups doing it as a fundraising drive, and seen homeless types picking through litter bins for cans to weigh in.
My point is that option for plastic simply isn't there.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45665
Location: Essex

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 14 9:26 am Post subject:
I think metal, glass and plastic should all carry a deposit. Money talks

Hairyloon

Joined: 20 Nov 2008
Posts: 15425
Location: Today I are mostly being in Yorkshire.

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 14 10:08 am Post subject:

tahir wrote:

I think metal, glass and plastic should all carry a deposit. Money talks

It wouldn't hurt for people to realise how much they are paying for packaging: I think I'm looking at charging around 1/3 of RRP for the bottles.

Nick

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 34535
Location: Hereford

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 14 2:04 pm Post subject:

Mistress Rose wrote:

It shouldn't be possible to recycle metal so easily now as all scrap merchants have to put the money into the bank account of the person bringing in the scrap and should be regularly checked by the police.

You do say weight for weight. A ton of most plastics is an awful lot of plastic and far less volume for metal.

They don't have to put it into an account. Our local one will give you a cheque. And cash it for you, so you can still walk away with folding. However, ID is required and stuff is now tracked, so it does prevent the local pikeys nicking drain covers quite so often.

onemanband

Joined: 26 Dec 2010
Posts: 1473
Location: NCA90

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 14 4:09 pm Post subject:

The best I can do with recycling my non-domestic plastic is to seperate it from my mixed waste and pay to dispose of it. It is about a third of cost of sending it to landfill.
As landfill charges are by weight and plastic is so light it is far easier to remove denser items from the waste. With the storage/labour required, for me plastic recycling is only economical if I have more than 1/4ton and that's a lot of plastic.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15950

Posted: Thu Apr 03, 14 6:40 am Post subject:

I agree with you Hairyloon that the facilities for plastic recycling are not as good. We can put some in our recycle bin, but it is limited to plastic bottles. That takes quite a lot out. The major problem is the very thin stuff like plastic bags and film covering, some of which ends up very dirty anyway. I am thinking here about the plastic round meat and such like. Some supermarkets will take plastic carriers for recycling, which at least takes them out of landfill, and other supermarkets give small incentives to reuse your bags, although charging for them would be better.

Having to pay a deposit or other payment for packaging would be a good idea as it would certainly make people think about it a bit more. Trouble is, with the current laws, you can't always reuse food packaging, and other stuff is not really practical. Our paper charcoal bags would be a real mess second time round and impossible after that, and log nets get very badly pulled. We can't really use things like hessian as if they are sealed, trading standards get a bit ratty because the customer can't see the contents.

Hairyloon

Joined: 20 Nov 2008
Posts: 15425
Location: Today I are mostly being in Yorkshire.

Posted: Thu Apr 03, 14 9:01 am Post subject:

Mistress Rose wrote:

We can put some in our recycle bin, but it is limited to plastic bottles.

That annoys me: it is pure laziness on the part of the council.

Quote:

Having to pay a deposit or other payment for packaging would be a good idea as it would certainly make people think about it a bit more. Trouble is, with the current laws, you can't always reuse food packaging...

Which laws, and which packaging?
OK, some stuff is obvious, but if their are laws prohibiting the re-use of bottles, then I want to know about them...

Quote:

We can't really use things like hessian as if they are sealed, trading standards get a bit ratty because the customer can't see the contents.

Unless the contents are not what it says on the label, then I can't see it is a matter for trading standards, though I expect a lot of customers like to see what they're buying.
It seems to me that a better class of log net might be in order, with deposit.

Hairyloon

Joined: 20 Nov 2008
Posts: 15425
Location: Today I are mostly being in Yorkshire.

Posted: Thu Apr 03, 14 9:05 am Post subject:

dpack wrote:

metal is easy to sort into type mixed plastic is not...

You know, I am not so sure about that. In my little random metal box there are a variety of shiny greyish pieces. Steel is easy to identify, but are the rest stainless steel, ally, nichrome or something else?
At least plastic now has to have it's type stamped on it somewhere...

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15950

Posted: Fri Apr 04, 14 6:18 am Post subject:

Some plastics are not what they seem. Even when I went for my first job in 1970 I was told that some are layered, so you might get a simple looking bag that has three layers. Yes, most 'hard' plastic items are stamped with a number for recycling, but most of our plastic waste is film or bags and they don't have a number on them.

Some county food hygiene people are very funny about reusing even glass bottles, so I would suggest that you check with yours before expecting to recycle.

For places where we can easily deal with recycling like farmers markets that we go to each month, we have little dumpy sacks for our logs and charge a deposit. It works out quite well. They have the advantage of being easy to carry too. For outlets like farm shops it is a bit more difficult, and net sacks are the best way. Some trading standards can get rather awkward I am afraid, so hessian is not a good option. A few years ago a particular one told all the market traders that they were not allowed to sell to anyone that asked for things in lb and oz. That was withdrawn after a few months, and most of them carried on regardless, but we always have to have weights with kg first, and lb is optional, so 1lb of honey has to be labelled 454g even though it is a moot point as to whether the degree of accuracy implied is correct (scientifically), as the scales only need to be accurate to about 5g.

Hairyloon

Joined: 20 Nov 2008
Posts: 15425
Location: Today I are mostly being in Yorkshire.

Posted: Fri Apr 04, 14 7:28 am Post subject:

Mistress Rose wrote:

but most of our plastic waste is film or bags...

"Our" as a nation, or yours?
I'm not convinced by the former.

Quote:

Some county food hygiene people are very funny about reusing even glass bottles...

If they're funny, then I'll laugh at them: I don't believe the law allows them to make that kind of decision.

Quote:

1lb of honey has to be labelled 454g even though it is a moot point as to whether the degree of accuracy implied is correct (scientifically), as the scales only need to be accurate to about 5g.

I believe the accuracy is not important as long as you don't sell short measure.

Hairyloon

Joined: 20 Nov 2008
Posts: 15425
Location: Today I are mostly being in Yorkshire.

Posted: Sat Apr 19, 14 8:45 am Post subject:

dpack wrote:

metal is easy to sort into type mixed plastic is not

If it is so easy, then what are hard disks made of?

pollyanna

Joined: 03 Nov 2012
Posts: 221

Posted: Sat Apr 19, 14 11:35 am Post subject:

All glass bottle put in recycle bins are sent for crushing, either to be used as-is (building materials, road surfaces, etc) or made into new bottles.

Metal collected in recycling is sorted, firstly, using magnets. Although they don't seem to do it now, I well-remember being paid by weight for aluminium cans which we took to a supermarket car park periodically.

Here in Wales we are apparently the part of the UK currently recycling the most. Though how eco-friendly is it for Pembrokeshire to be sending the stuff to Oxford for sorting? Carmarthenshire have an exemplary rubbish site near Carmarthen.

	Downsizer Forum Index -> Reduce, Reuse, Recycle	All times are GMT Page 1, 2 Next
Page 1 of 2

View Latest Posts