Free markets aren't rubbish – in fact, they solve our rubbish woes

The UN noted last week that there's rather a lot of computing and other electrical and electronic waste around. Meeellions upon millions of tonnes, in fact. As they say, it might be a good idea to think about recycling some of this crud. However, if we're going to do that then we need to get the economics of this right: and I've …

[Neil Barnes]

When I was a kid

Fizzy pop cost one and six a bottle, with threepence back on the bottle. We used to harrass the neighbours for their empties, and my word we were efficient about it - take six back and we got a free bottle, *and* we had threepence towards the next one.

Watching that in Germany a couple of years back - drinks also had, as I understand it, a small return charge on the bottle, and the polite thing to do seemed to be *not* to reclaim it but to dispose in roadside refuse bins, thus allowing the more unfortunate members of the society to benefit. Don't know if that still applies.

Last time I was in Rio, the street kids were very hot on collecting alumium drinks tins (and any remaining drink therein, too, if they were quick!) from the Copacabana snack bar tables for scrap value.

Oddly though, in the days when I worked a milk round, there was no recharge on the bottle though you were expected to leave the empties out to be collected by the milkie.

Recycling-by-precharge certainly works in some situations, but it does rely - as Tim points out - on having a group for whom it becomes economic to make the collection.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: When I was a kid

That system seemed to die out in the UK about 1960ish. AFAIK the cost of sorting the bottles, cleaning them & putting them back into the bottle-filling system was more than the cost of buying and using new bottles.

[Nigel 13]

Re: When I was a kid

I was returning bottles for deposits on BARR and Alpine pop bottles up until 84 in the UK. Concerning the previous post, I never knew the polite thing to do was leave the bottles in bins. If I know that whilst in Germany I would have done the same.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: When I was a kid

Round here (Glasgow) Barr still sell drinks in returnable glass bottles, and very popular they are too (a cabbie with one next to him isn't carrying an offensive weapon for instance). At the canteen in my workplace, they get crated up and returned for charity.

[MonkeyCee]

Re: When I was a kid

Ah, those reverse vending machines. The big issue with them is that in order to work effectively, the deposit needs to be on pretty much every container type. This is the case in Denmark. It also needs some solid rules requiring all machines to accept all the container types. Again this is the case in Denmark.

However I live in the Netherlands, and much like Germany, the charge exists on 1.5+ liter plastic bottles and glass beer bottles. But each store gets to set it's own policies on the machines, so a number of supermarkets (Aldi, Lidl, Plus) will charge you the 25c/10c per container when you buy it, but make it very difficult to get the money back. You can only return bottles in a crate of 24, and no other option, and you cannot return bottles from other stores.

The net result is that the supermarkets make more money, and somewhere between 25-40% don't actually get returned. The fees are also pretty high relative to the item cost, a crate of cheap beer about half the cost is deposit, cheap soft drink 30% is deposit. The cost of running the scheme is higher than subsidising plastic or glass recyclers but an order of magnitude.

It's the same way we don't sort metals in our standard household waste. It's cheaper to recover it later in the collection process, since you don't ever get it cleaned enough in the separated waste you've got to have a shredding and washing proicess anyway, so just do it all as one.

I live in poor neighborhood, with a fair few rag and bone types. They know how much they can get for a bit of sorted scrap, and they do in fact drive around yelling for it. I buy bits from them, since I'll pay scrap value +50%, and a repairable bit of scrap is worth 400-10000% more than it's scrap value. Mainly it's computers and bikes, but even something as basic as a desktop (3-5 euros scrap value) I can get 20 euros from if I spend 30 minutes stripping and testing it. If I'm lucky I get 80+, but it's a gamble on what's still working. Laptops are pretty much worthless unless you find someone who wants the parts (hinges mainly).

I'm even lazier with the bikes, I pay the scrappy a tenner, a mobile bike repair guy 20, and sell it for 50. Bish bash bosh. Or 20 for a decent bike that's been mangled, and the parts go for 50.

The main problem Joe Public has with trying to sell their scrap is that you will get ripped off at every possible point by the scrapyards. Since my local little guys are my neighbors, and goodwill is priceless, I have explained to them that selling motherboards with RAM and CPU on for 50c a kilo when you can get 2-8 a kilo for the boards, and 30-100 a kilo for the RAM and CPU is leaving money on the table.

It's a classic example that the free market works, and of the value of information. You don't even need that much bulk, 1kg of RAM or 10kg of high grade boards will get you sensible prices from a refiner, as compared to the 100kg+ you need to get half decent prices on alu etc.

In general all IT goods (even laptops) are at the high end of e-waste, and are almost always worth the time. It's the white goods that get iffy, strip the wiring and motors and they aren't worth the time. CRTs are bad for your health, and if you're doing them properly are loss making. Which is why they are most often stripped of their valuable bits and dumped.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: When I was a kid

@Doctor Syntax - I was doing it up to about 1968 - Barrs and Crystal Springs, in the Wakefield area. I don't recall doing it after that, but we moved house in 1968 and the opportunities may not have been so lucrative.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: When I was a kid

@ Neil Barnes

I was a bit further up country in Ben Shaws territory. But in the early 60s I was off to University & we had a bar in halls so empties didn't come into it. Clearly memory is playing me false (it does these days ;) as to date but the principle still applies: once the recycling costs exceed those of replacement nobody's interested.

[Voland's right hand]

Re: When I was a kid

That system seemed to die out in the UK about 1960ish.

That system died worldwide by ~ 2000. Prior tot hat we used to have a joke in college that no party is woth mentioning if it does not have a non-zero first derivative (e.g. f you cannot buy some booze after returning the bottles). A really big one had a non-zero second derivative. Add your jokes about e^x, integration, etc here :)

The difference is in what replaced it:

In most countries it was replaced by plastic which still largely goes into landfill regardless of all the efforts to recycle it.

In a few countries which already had strict recycling and environmental regs it was partially replaced by an alternative system where the bottles are melted and recast a-new instead of being washed. It is reasonably cost effective and more enviromentally friendly than plastic for small (250ml and 330ml) containers.

[Alan Brown]

Re: When I was a kid

"In most countries it was replaced by plastic which still largely goes into landfill regardless of all the efforts to recycle it."

"an alternative system where the bottles are melted and recast a-new instead of being washed."

The energy cost of cleaning and reusing post-consumer plastic waste is so high that it's more efficient to burn them for fuel (no cleaning needed) and use new feedstock. You'll use less oil doing it that way than trying to reuse or recycle (Plastic bottles and other injection moulded items need high-purity input. Any contamination will result in defects) About the only other use of plastic bottles which doesn't use more oil than burning 'em and making new ones is to turn them into insulating batts - and there's only so much of that which can be sold.

Bulk plastic _is_ a valuable resource - for fuel - and there's no reason it should be going into landfill other than sorting issues.

[Bryan B]

Re: When I was a kid

The UK system was killed off because the producers didn't like it. It caused them trouble, so in those pre-Green days they'd far rather just dump it in a bin and leave the local council send the stuff to landfill.

Even today there's people arguing that non-returnables are "better" (better for them, they mean) because of the challenges of collecting, transporting and cleaning empties for re-use.

Of course, much has changed since the 60s. The cost of new bottles, the cost of the energy to melt and rework old ones, the cost of transportation, the cost of landfill, etc. And yes, a proper analysis would include the costs of re-use against the costs of recycling or dumping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: When I was a kid

"And yes, a proper analysis would include the costs of re-use against the costs of recycling or dumping."

Part of the problem is the focus on recycling. Look at those areas of the UK with seven or more different receptacles for sorted recycling (often that there's no market for, or where the cost of recycling requires a subsidy).

Councils should have waste sorted into combustible (including putrescible) materials (food waste, all plastics, vacuum cleaner dust, all forms of paper, wood, garden waste, plus liquids, oils, paints and solvents) and send that for incineration in an energy from waste plant, and all the rest would be dry waste, primarily glass, metals and consumer goods. Shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to design a sorter to remove the metals and glass. Glass should go into construction products if it isn't economic to recycle as containers (we've got a brick shortage, why not make construction blocks from sintered glass, or use it as a filler in other construction materials?), or use it in road materials or insulation products. Metals have by and large always had an economic market. And then you shred the end of life consumer products and recover or landfill the "computer cullet" as appropriate.

Easier for households (two bins), less waste to landfill, more construction materials, heat and power from all the combustibles.....And all you need to do is tear up the idea that "recycling" is a good thing for its own sake.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: When I was a kid

"Glass should go into construction products if it isn't economic to recycle as containers"

Ideally, glass is separated by colour so it can be melted and mixed with "new" glass for re-use. In practice, most recycled consumer glass goes in one bin collected by the council and gets ground down into cullet and is mixed with the road marking paint. That's what makes the paint "shine" in your headlights at night.

The additional problem with melting down glass for re-use is that all glass is not the same. You need to know the constituents of the glass before you know what its physical properties are going to be.

[Alan Brown]

Re: When I was a kid

"Ideally, glass is separated by colour so it can be melted and mixed with "new" glass for re-use"

Far too expensive unless you can automate it. Anthing requiring human input is prone to deliberate contamination.

"In practice, most recycled consumer glass goes in one bin collected by the council and gets ground down into cullet and is mixed with the road marking paint. "

There's nothing wrong with that at all.

It's low energy, fills a need and it doesn't overly matter what kind of glass was used initially. This is recycling done RIGHT.

[Squander Two]

Re: When I was a kid @ Ledswinger

> Shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to design a sorter to remove the metals and glass.

Saw a documentary about twenty years ago about a guy in (I think) Sheffield who'd set up a rather lucrative business doing this. He had a big machine that could extract metals and other materials from rubbish. It could also separate the organic matter. The council paid him to take their rubbish away, and he ended up with sellable scrap metal and and organic mush that could be sold as fertilizer.

So, yeah, we've had such machines for a long time now.

[tomp83]

Re: When I was a kid

We have that in Denmark. A six pack of beer costs 36 Kr, with 6 Kr. of that being a deposit for the can. All the supermarkets have an automated machine that scans your returns and prints off a voucher for the returned amount.

At home I collect the bottles and cans and return them. When I'm out and about then people usually just leave them next to a bin where someone will surely collect, often within a few minutes.

1 Kr. = 10p (British pence), so after a decent party there are usual a few quids worth of empties lying around

[Mayhem]

Re: When I was a kid

In Germany today there is a 25c deposit on all plastic drink bottles, which means a bunch of extremely efficient scavengers are permanently installed just outside Security in all the airports, gratefully taking your bottle off you before you go through. With an average of 150ppl per Easyjet flight, that's a lot of bottles coming through.

[glen waverley]

bottles for the milko

"Oddly though, in the days when I worked a milk round, there was no recharge on the bottle though you were expected to leave the empties out to be collected by the milkie."

I thought the number of empty bottles you put out indicated the number of full bottles you wanted supplied. But maybe that was just in my area.

[Yag]

Re: When I was a kid

Watching that in Germany a couple of years back - drinks also had, as I understand it, a small return charge on the bottle, and the polite thing to do seemed to be *not* to reclaim it but to dispose in roadside refuse bins, thus allowing the more unfortunate members of the society to benefit. Don't know if that still applies.

The Pfand was still there last year.

[Alan Brown]

Re: When I was a kid

"Oddly though, in the days when I worked a milk round, there was no recharge on the bottle though you were expected to leave the empties out to be collected by the milkie."

When I did rounds in New Zealand there was no rebate but if you didn't exchange you paid extra for the bottle.

As others have said, the process was scrapped because cleaning the bottles, etc cost far more than using disposable plastics or tetrapacks.

[dc_m]

Re: When I was a kid

yup, it still is the tradition in Germany, I spotted it in Berlin a few weeks ago. It took a while to work out what people were doing.

[BobRocket]

We already pay

The deposit on the (soon to be) trash is in the form of my council tax, it is economically worth someone to come and collect the stuff from my house and take it to a central depot (that would be the binman)

Once at the central depot the trash should be specifically sorted into stuff worth money now and sold immediately, the rest should be roughly sorted into similar types, logged and dumped in specific areas of landfill.

The piles of (currently) worthless stuff would accumulate until at some point someone can see a profit in extracting it and that pile would disappear.

Landfill should be seen as temporary storage and not final resting place.

Councils could sell the potential future value of piles of stuff for money today which would pay towards its collection and storage today.

The more stuff the council collected today the greater the potential future value of the piles will be.

Perhaps councils should be collecting the trash more frequently whilst lowering my council tax bill rather than the reverse situation as it currently stands.

[Shady]

Re: We already pay

"Landfill should be seen as temporary storage and not final resting place.

Councils could sell the potential future value of piles of stuff for money today which would pay towards its collection and storage today."

I thought when they were full the councils just dropped a few inches of topsoil on them then sold them to builders as "potentially lucrative greenfield opportunities".

[Anonymous Coward]

We could have dedicated networks of rag-and-bone men

Could ?

Round here, there's usually 3 scrappies in a day - and at least one Sundays.

[Tim Worstal]

Re: We could have dedicated networks of rag-and-bone men

Here in Czechia we've actually got a local mayor who refuses to set up a recycling scheme. Teplice? Most, somewhere nearby here. He, most politically incorrectly, simply notes that there's a sizeable gypsy population and they do it all for us without anyone having to pay council tax.

Not entirely sure about the ethics of that but it does have to be said that it works.

[MonkeyCee]

Re: We could have dedicated networks of rag-and-bone men

The problem with gypsy recylers and those with less ethics is that you can strip 80-90% of the value from an item with not a lot of effort, and dump the rest for someone else to sort out. Since what is being dumped is usually the plastic case (you can get money for ABS etc but you need half a tonne+) and lead filled glass with phospher coating it's not very good for anyone around.

You can use a chisel or a blowtorch to strip most of the value from a PCB, and send that off to be refined while leaving the PCB to be someone else problem. But that's not really very ethical. Hence why even though I don't make any money (and neither does the refiner) I tend to ship my boards whole to the refiners. Plus they can be real shits if they decide you've "stripped" the board even if it's taking off something low value like a USB socket. Which is why I usually get them assayed, but again takes a larger amount to make it work.

I'd also lose my business licence too, but I don't think that would bother the gypsies :)

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: We could have dedicated networks of rag-and-bone men

Similar problem here with the 5/10c recycling on bottles/cans.

Mostly it works very well - an army of "independant contractors" with shopping carts mean you don't see many cans around. People even put their empty cans on top of rubbish bins to help them.

But you also get people with trucks who will collect everyones blue box, have a minion in the back picking out the cans and then dump the emptied blue boxes and their other contents in a pile at the end of the street before starting on the next block.

[phil dude]

Re: We could have dedicated networks of rag-and-bone men

I thought the term "gypsy" was pejorative in Europe when not used by the ethnic group?

I think like you, I am not at all comfortable with the burden of recycling being cast on members of society without formal employment opportunities.

The Romani in Italy have gangs of children that thieve for them. It is nothing short of child abuse.

P.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: We could have dedicated networks of rag-and-bone men

"He, most politically incorrectly, simply notes that there's a sizeable gypsy population and they do it all for us without anyone having to pay council tax."

Not quite the same thing but when we lived in High Wycombe there was a thriving, and clearly approved, trading operation going on at the local dump. As soon as you opened the car boot whatever you were taking there would be removed & checked for anything possibly saleable (it was wise to make sure you didn't have anything in there that you weren't intending to dump).

After we'd subsequently moved to Huddersfield (Labour controlled council, obviously against anything resembling private enterprise) and saw an item in the local paper about someone being prosecute for removing stuff from the skips. I wonder which council had the greatest land-fill per head.

[MonkeyCee]

Re: We could have dedicated networks of rag-and-bone men

"someone being prosecute for removing stuff from the skips"

It depends who owns the skip.

There is an issue where a properly organised building materials recycler who has separate skips for wood, metal, concrete and glass etc has agreed a rate with the builders, based on how much they expect to get from the site, and who does the sorting (builders or recyclers). Then you get the scrotes nipping along emptying the metals skip of all the shiny alu. Which is theft and makes being a legit recycler harder.

This can also apply to being at the dump, as again once it's been sorted into a skip, it belongs to the company who is planning on selling it. Some may let you take stuff, but it depends on how your local council has outsourced the contract. If I've paid for the right to have the waste, then it's because I think it's worth it. It could be seen as the equivalent of helping yourself to ore that's been mined (after the company has paid all due resource rents) and saying that's OK because it's all out of the ground.

Different rules apply to stuff that is in a bin for collection, a skip, if it's on public or private land, and if there's a company name on it. It's never as simple as "help yourself without asking", same as with all property really.

Worst case that I've seen was several pallets of CRT monitors. Had sorted the pain in the arse permits, arranged transport, sorted a proper disposal unit and was even going to make a tiny profit (about half minimum wage for me, yay being a SMB owner), and then some shithead had ripped all the copper out of them, leaving me with a skip load of plastic and smashed leaded glass and phosphor dust everywhere. Which my permits did not cover, the transport company would refuse to move, the disposal company wouldn't take.

[SImon Hobson]

Re: We could have dedicated networks of rag-and-bone men

>> someone being prosecute for removing stuff from the skips

> It depends who owns the skip.

Indeed.

Round here, at the recycling centres they used to sell stuff - I've got some very good axle stands that were sold from the scrap metal bin, and we've had other stuff as well over the years. Seems a sensible idea - if a <something> has a value to someone, then selling it for simple re-use is the most efficient way of "recycling" it.

But there was "a bit of a hoo har" with the contractors who ran the centres on behalf of the council - never heard the details, but it involved police and looking into the financial affairs of some of the managers. Then things changed, different contractors, and an absolute rule that nothing leaves the site other than in the skips. That does seem a bit short sighted when there are big signs up promoting the council's mantra of "reduce - reuse - recycle" - make it hard to reuse someone else's rubbish !

[chris swain]

Similar argument to the value of personal data?

'Scrap works the other way around. Each unit is worth more as it is aggregated with more such units.'

As previously pointed out in Mr Worstall's posts personal data ain't worth diddly until it is aggregated. I guess the accumulation just needs the correct incentives. A recycling tariff might do the trick or perhaps we need to get some Shoreditch hipster to come up with a business model like they do for harvesting our data.

[P. Lee]

> We're all used to the idea that one unit among 10,000 on a ship is worth less than one unit on a shop shelf

Someone hasn't been to Australian supermarkets where you have to check the prices on everything - they often bump the prices *up* per kg on the larger containers, presumably on the grounds that everyone thinks they should cost less and/or aren't paying attention.

[MonkeyCee]

supermarket pricing

Supermarket pricing is it's own special brand of scamming. That's why they do their level best to avoid per kg prices if possible.

My local (Lidl) has things in per kg, per 100g, per 500g and per "packet size".

Even my normally savvy wife will buy something that's "on special" because it has a oragne sticker on it. Even it is 2 cents off a 2 euro item. That we don't really want :)

They do very nice tiramisu at either 500g for 3 euro, or 90g in a small glass for 2 euro. The glasses are a)too small for much use and b) more expensive (effectively) than buying proper sized ones from Ikea. But they still tricked my wife into getting them because the glass is "free".

She did realise this after I pointed out that we should decide to get tiramisu or glasses on their own merits, rather than a dubious combined package.

[JimmyPage]

Re: supermarket pricing

is a not-so-subtle form of idiot tax.

Many moons ago, when our lad was proudly learning maths, we were shopping, and he noticed that it was cheaper to buy 2x24 Weetabix, than the 1x48 packet (special offer). Over £1 saving. He saw a lady go to pick up the 48 pack, and proudly explained she could save a pound by buying 2 24s.

She gave a confused look, and said "but I want 48" ... he tried to explain that 2x24 was 48, but got a scowl as the lady repeated "but I want 48" and huffed off.

Still happens now. I guarantee you can go into any of the big 4 supermarkets, and find the same.

My recent favourite was 600g jars of mayonnaise priced the same as the 400g jars. Next to each other (Sainsburys). Or 500g tubs of marge less than half the price of the 1Kg tub ....

[Neil Barnes]

Re: supermarket pricing

Yep - when I was researching the book, Sainsbury's was offering their own brand olive oil spread at £2.50/1kg. Right next to it were 250g packs at £1.50, but on offer (for months) at two for two quid - and yet I watched folk look at both and get the big one. Seen the two-size same-price mayo, too.

Fruit's another option: buy the pack and pay more per fruit than individually priced fruit just sat there. though of course they jump through hoops usually to make comparison impossible: in the bag priced per three with no weight, and the loose priced per kilo.

[Alfred]

Re: supermarket pricing

"Sainsbury's was offering their own brand olive oil spread at £2.50/1kg. Right next to it were 250g packs at £1.50, but on offer (for months) at two for two quid - and yet I watched folk look at both and get the big one."

So, a single-pack kilogram for £2.50, or half a kilo for £2? Getting the big pack seems like the better value.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: supermarket pricing

*Two* half kilo packs for two quid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: supermarket pricing

But you didn't write"half-kilo" in your OP, you wrote 250g! ;-)

[Neil Barnes]

Re: supermarket pricing

Lack of food is obviously affecting my cognitive faculties.

[auburnman]

Re: supermarket pricing

In the UK there's usually a price per 100g/ml/item in the small print on the shelf sticker in most of the supermarkets for easy comparison. Not sure if this is due to legislation or a voluntary code or just trying to one up the other mob, but all the same studying the shelf sticker closely usually pays dividends.

[MonkeyCee]

Re: supermarket pricing

"In the UK there's usually a price per 100g/ml/item in the small print on the shelf sticker in most of the supermarkets for easy comparison."

But not one explaining that for the special offer.

The UK does at least stick to using the same method throughout the store. Dutch supermarkets are fond of pricing in 500g/1kg/100g units to suit themselves, often on items right next to each other.

[phil dude]

Re: supermarket pricing

and to my annoyance in Oxford they insisted you BUY two of the sodding item.

At least here in the US if it is two for one, one is actually half-price.

P.

[flangeorificial]

the free market also create our rubbish woes, so yey for the free market, partially wiping its own arse as long as there's money left on the paper.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the point of the article is that when the free market creates undesirable externalities, it doesn't mean that you have to kill the market, you can find ways to price the externalities in and keep the benefits of competitive markets.

The drinks container deposit system in my state really helps to ensure that the vast majority of drink cans and bottles get recycled. Consumer pays, waste is reduced.

And at least for small non-organic waste, I think a big part of the aggregation problem could be solved by using schools:

- they're pretty ubiquitous

- lots of households have members who regularly go there

The risk is that you'd have all that waste awaiting collection in large containers and schools have some attendees who are destructive sociopaths ... and that's just the teachers.*

* Yes, reference

[Alan Brown]

"And at least for small non-organic waste, I think a big part of the aggregation problem could be solved by using schools:"

There is precedent for this. During the 70s the schools I attended in NZ all had recycling collection bins in the carparks and were paid by the scrappies per ton hauled away.

That money went towards fundraising for projects, etc - which gave a strong incentive for parents to participate.

[Tromos]

Many supermarkets in Greece have a machine for taking empty beer bottles and printing a credit slip for the 20 eurocent per bottle deposit refund. A few years back there were one armed bandits dotted about that took empty drinks cans. Pulling a lever to spin the reels also crushed the can and the payouts were in the form of money off vouchers to spend in a nearby establishment.

A few simple incentives work a whole lot better than fines and punishments.

[MonkeyCee]

20c

See my point above.

Supermarket will _always_ charge you 20c deposit. They will pay it back somewhere between 0% and 100% of the time. Thus supermarket likes it.

It still isn't an effective system unless it is applied to all containers. It almost always isn't. The exception being Denmark (and others? I don't travel enough). The main manufacturer of these reverse vending machines (Tonka) is Danish.

It almost always works out to be cheaper to collect those deposit payments, and pay waste collection companies to do the collection and sorting rather than relying on the punters. It certainly does in the Netherlands, and that's a small, highly urban country with a very regulated waste collection industry.

It's a feelgood measure. Like certain of my family members who feel they are "green" because they wash their tins and sort their rubbish, but take 2+ international holidays a year.

[Kubla Cant]

one armed bandits ... that took empty drinks cans

What happens if you win the jackpot? I'm not sure I want 1000 empty drinks cans.

[Nixinkome]

I thought I'd already registered with The Register - whoops. Tim Worstall is correct and comments and discussion on this topic should be large. We [as sufferers of toxins] can then determine quickly how to deal with this problem; even complaints are gratefully accepted.

[Niall Mac Caughey]

@MonkeyCee

It still isn't an effective system unless it is applied to all containers.

It's a long time since I spent time in the US of A so I don't know if it still operates, but there was a system in (I think) five states in the NY, CT, etc area whereby all disposable drink containers carried a 5c deposit. Most supermarkets had machines in the lobby to accept the returns, the only catch being that the barcode had to be legible as some of the nearby states weren't signed up.

The machine would crush cans but shred PET bottles to small pellets. I used them a lot, especially when broke - which was most of the timet.

The most noticeable effect was cleanliness; it was very rare to see a discarded drink container anywhere.

[JimmyPage]

rare to see a discarded drink container anywhere

doubt you'd have the same result in blighty. Went for a walk in the park last week. Came across two patches where people had been drinking. I knew this, because they'd left their cans on the grass. I wouldn't mind so much, but one was about 5 metres from a bin, and there are bins at every exit.

Although generally opposed to the death penalty, I believe no good case has been made for not stringing up people who show so little respect for their - and others - environment; that they pollute it.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: rare to see a discarded drink container anywhere

"Although generally opposed to the death penalty, I believe no good case has been made for not stringing up people"

It doesn't have to be the death penalty. It just depends on the part of the anatomy by which you string them up.

[Alan Brown]

Re: rare to see a discarded drink container anywhere

"one was about 5 metres from a bin, and there are bins at every exit"

The local oiks will happily dump stuff on the ground whilst standing right next to the bins.

There's no culture of urban pride in the UK.

[MonkeyCee]

returning empties

The system works fine as long as the returned items are within the limits set by the machine. So relatively clean, standard sized containers with intact barcodes are good.

However if your beer bottle is non-standard shape then you'll pay the "deposit" but not get it back. Or if your plastic bottle is the wrong shape from being squished. Or the can is deformed. Or it's the wrong weight due to it's use as an ashtray. I could go on, but you get the general idea. Things put in the rubbish are often dirty or damaged, and then they don't get recycled. Or the producers lobby for exemptions, so milk and wine containers don't count etc.

It also differs between countries, and I'm 20km away from two, god forbid I try to put Belgium or German bottles through the machines in the Netherlands.

What it means in practical terms is that I tend to buy items that don't have a return on them (500ml soft drink, cans), so I can just toss them when I'm done. They end up being used as fuel in incinerators, but that's due to how the rubbish companies are regulated. Hence why if they levied a tariff on each container and then that got paid to the rubbish companies to cover disposal I'm fine with that. Since currently most of my deposits end up going to pay for the running of the machines, and then subsidised with some tax money. So I get to pay twice, three times if it's my own bin :)

I am biased by the fact my local supermarket is a Lidl, which has the machine set to super bastard levels of being unhelpful. You can even make a few euros by emptying the bin next to it from all the discarded "unacceptable" containers and taking them to Albert Heijn or Jumbo, who tend to be more helpful. But often still, no barcode = no deposit.

[YARR]

Recycling

The main problems I have with recycling are....

1. Many items still aren't clearly labelled as to whether they are recyclable. There needs to be a consistent mandatory labeling standard implemented. I think some producers are loathe to admit their packaging can't be recycled, but not clearly labeling items can lead to recycling mistakes. (The logos that tell you something is made FROM recycled material are confusing).

2. Some items can be recycled in some places but not others. There needs to be a wider policy to make recycling consistent.

3. Some councils don't bother recycling in areas where residents don't have space for multiple bins. This could be overcome if there was only one bin for all recyclables and items were automatically sorted, Or better still, if all rubbish was automatically sorted for recycling. Automatic recycling technology would allow more obscure materials like those mentioned in this article to be reused.

[BobRocket]

Re: Recycling

'The main problems I have with recycling are....'

The only problem I have is why the **** am I doing it, I don't surface mount all the components on a circiut board when I want a new PC I pay someone else to do it, someone who knows what they are doing.

I don't do my own open heart surgery either, or paint lines on the road.

I pay a specialist to do the tasks I don't want to do or can't do, this is how the modern economy works.

If everybody was completely self sufficient there would be no trade and no economy.

[Squander Two]

Re: Recycling

Exactly. And, since the whole point of recycling is supposed to be that it's good for the environment, what about economies of scale? What kind of retard tries to help the environment by getting tens of thousands of people to do things separately instead of doing it in bulk? Especially when you consider that they insist we wash the bottles and tins and cartons. I'd love to see a proper comparison of the amount of heat, water, and detergent used by a whole townful of people washing their containers separately versus having it all done in a central plant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Recycling

And you're why there's no-sort recycling. It takes more effort for the recycler to sort everything, but reducing effort for the consumer raises recycling rates, and the recycler's profit motive helps lead to the development of effective automated sorting systems.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Recycling

"The main problems I have with recycling are...."

They all boil down to the councils expecting consumers to presort. This simply doesn't work.

Refuse transfer stations coupled to materials recovery facilities are hardly a new innovation and they tend to be profitable.

[OllyL]

They have a $0.10 deposit on any carbonated drink bottle/can here in Michigan (still drinks don't incur this...I guess so that Milk and such don't get hit?), and in the local Meijer (supermarket) they have a hole in the wall with a conveyor belt that you can put the empties on, it scans the barcode and if it's recognized, adds the $0.10 to a running total and prints you a chit at the end you can redeem in store against your shopping etc...

Vis the rag & bone men, here in Detroit every second Thursday they have 'bulk pickup day'; you always know when it is as the (neighbor)hood is full of people in pickup trucks trolling the pavements looking for anything of value they can sell to a scrapyard (the 70's era metal filing cabinet I put out a couple of weeks back barely had time to make an indentation on the grass before it was half-inched)...saves the city money (i presume) on not having to collect it and puts some cash in some of the locals pockets!

[SImon Hobson]

Locally Shanks have built a biological waste treatment plant.

In principle, all the municipal waste can go into one end, it gets shredded and piled up for composting, and air is drawn through it to control the temperature.

Under the right conditions, "bugs" process the compostable stuff - with the heat and airflow carrying away moisture. The warm & moist exhaust is taken through a bark-chip bed where more bugs deal with any smells before going up a chimney.

After a couple of weeks, the compost (now fairly dry) is pulled from the pit, and then is mechanically separated - glass, stone, metals, paper & plastic, etc are all separated. Metals go for recycling, stone and glass goes away for use in construction, the paper & plastic is baled up and goes away to a cement factory where it's incinerated to power the calciner.

http://www.cumbria.gov.uk/planning-environment/mbt/default.asp

[HAL-9000]

Free market malcontents

Hi Tim,

I'm considering the merits of setting up a crowdfunding campaign to relocate as many free marketards as possible to a climate more suitable to their beliefs. There is obviously quite a short list of locations, antartica, somalia, western sahara ... you get the gist, however I believe it to be a noble cause increasing humanities overall happiness. Once funds are raised, oneway plane tickets will be purchased, and a network of volunteers will gladly provide transport to the airport, buy the departees a refreshment and wave goodbye as the newly expatriated individuals journey to the location of their choice. Once arrived our noble libertarians can bask in the joy of not paying taxes to those feral governments who only waste it on trivial things like public health, welfare, education, infrastructure, and other such pointless things.

Your thoughts are truly welcome

Guido