Nothing wasted, so it is claimed, as supposed recycling rate soars

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Epsom and Ewell Council, in the county of Surrey, in Britain, is on course, statistically, to have one of the highest waste recycling rates in the country.

The new recycling system that was started to be introduced in the borough in March has now been extended to finally be covering the whole of the district.

The council now offers a kerbside recycling service for food waste, plastic bottles and cardboard.

People using the new service people in the initial areas of the the borough have boosted their recycling rate to more than 55 per cent.

This means the borough is on course to recycle and compost one of the highest proportions of waste in the country while the cost of the service remains below the national average.

On average, the council is collecting about 30 tonnes of food waste for composting every week and about 20 tonnes of plastic bottles and cardboard for recycling.

The question for the cynics here though remains as to how much of the bottles and the cardboard really is, in the end, recycled and does not end up in landfill due to, say, lack of demand for the “raw material”, that is to say, the bottles and cardboard by the re-processors. This was the case not so long ago countrywide with glass bottles.

The problem is that this council, like so many others, as I understand it, does not take any other plastics for recycling bar bottles and they have to be #1 and/or #2. There are basically no facilities anywhere in this country to deal with any other plastics which, theoretically, are recyclable.

Reduction and upcycling must be the first priority in the fight against waste and not only the recycling idea of processing the articles, such as the bottles and the cardboard, via a breaking-down process, to new plastic and paper/board.

Also, as we have discussed before, it is not possible to make new plastic from 100% recycled and the same goes for paper and board if it is to be of any strength.

Reuse and upcycling we need to look at at a much larger scale than only recycling.

Why can cardboard boxes not go back to a supplier for reuse, for instance, or have companies actually collect them and resell them to people wanting boxes. It is done in some places and countries. Sure this can be done in Britain and elsewhere too.

© 2009
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Champagne Cork Peg Board (Practical Recycling)

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

In my opinion, but then most of your regular readers will know that already, practical recycling, that is to say, turning items of “trash”, whether discarded by yourself or by others, into usable goods, must come well before the commercial recycling.

Then again this kind of recycling also can make for the creation of, hopefully, saleable items, thereby becoming commercial, but not in the way of the commercial grand scale recycling of the reclaiming secondary raw materials is.

Champagne Cork Peg Board (Coat Rack).

This is a project that happened to result out of the fact that I once worked in a catering establishment where such corks were in abundance and they ended up thrown away after events and functions and, thinking that there might be a use for them though which I did not know at the particular time, I took a number of them with me to see what might come to mind some day.

One day then, without much thinking about it, a peg board come coat rack came to mind as I wanted to make one for some reason and I remembered the champagne corks. Having a board to hand it took but a few minutes, literally, to have a working peg board/coat rack to go onto the wall.

Ingredients:

• A number of champagne corks (real cork or pressed cork)
• Equal number of long wood screws (normal slot is better than Phillips)
• A nice wooden plank as a back board (this could be salvaged skirting, floorboard or from a pallet)

First of prepare the back board. This may mean, if need and you wish to do so, sanding and oiling (using vegetable oil), after having drilled the two holes that will be used as to wherewith to affix the board to the wall by means of screws. The rest, then, is a simple as ABC. Screw screw into cork slowly and precise into the previously marked peg locations and once they have all been screwed in – voila – one peg board or coat rack.

Apart from the screws (unless they be salvaged too – and this is possible) there should be no financial layout for this project. However, properly promoted, this could be something that a livelihood project could make.

Idea & Design © Michael Smith (Veshengro), 2001-2008