Bishop Hill The slow, green way to recycle
Apr 11, 2016 Recycling ;)
The news that a vast, shiny, new state of the art recycling centre in Lancashire is to be mothballed after incurring "catastrophic losses" will not come as much of a surprise to anyone who keeps an eye on the green scene. A moment's thought by anyone with more than a couple of braincells to rub together leads to the inevitable conclusion that expending vast resources - energy, labour, capital, chemicals and the like - to turn low value items into even lower value items is not much of an economic proposition. With councils increasingly cash-strapped, it is becoming ever harder to sustain the illusion that recycling is anything other than virtue-signalling from middle-class poseurs.
Perhaps landfill needs to have its brand detoxified. Rather than wasting all those precious resources on collecting refuse to turn it into heaven knows what, let's use the power of Mother Nature to break down and recycle what can be broken down, leaving what is inert to cause no trouble to anyone. Yes, it will be slower than what passes for recycling now, but aren't greens in favour of using slower, more natural approaches whenever they can?
"Landfill: the slow, green way to recycle".
Reader Comments (166)
What's causing the failure of recycling in the UK is complex.
I have social credit beliefs (I.e. In the modern world capital dominates nearly all and dwarfs labour inputs )
But rubbish collection and sorting remains one of the few industrial tasks remaining that requires large amounts of human labour.
The question is not the cost of this task but why the residents of each locality is bankrupt from charges added on.
Charges that subsequently disappear from local and indeed national money exchange.
Spivs / consultants are taking the cream.
Labour theory of value concepts still matter for such tasks.
The now privatised rubbish men get paid very little for a tough and dirty job.
Today typically they are eastern European lads.
More interesting information Alan t.B.(fabulous name by the way!).
I meant comparison with my neighbour's fishpond in jest, but I wonder if I should have been so flippant. Looked at the thickness of their lining, it was thicker than 0.5mm, had no seams, and only had to cover just over a square metre. Yet it repeatedly leaked when first installed. Given the area of many disused quarries and the depth to which they are filled, and the time frames involved, can you be so sure that the liners will be effective over the time interval needed?
It's true that I don't know of any failures and a quick google search was unsuccessful in finding any, but have there truly been no instances of leakage from a geo liner?
Bish,
I am happy to agree that a large number of recycling schemes are vanity projects, driven by ideology and a dearth of any understanding of engineering and economics.
However, I don't think it is a good think to replace one poorly thought-out ideologically-based scheme with an alternative poorly thought-out slogan-based scheme. The true problem at base is that any waste disposal scheme that relies on the general public to sort their waste to high standards will fail. And, if you throw everything into unsealed landfill, then you really have set a time bomb ticking. Toxic organics, heavy metals and other toxic inorganics will eventually lead to contaminated groundwater. Who wants that? Can you seal the landfill in sedimentary strata? Perhaps, but I have little confidence in such schemes. I cannot even seal my cellar despite the initial impermeable liner (outside the brickwork) and years of attempts to fix the problems of water inflow afterwards. Mmm, so perhaps we excavate some sites only in impermeable rock? This means transporting large volumes of waste to places like Cornwall and Scotland - to the joy of the local inhabitants no doubt.
Perhaps, it is more intelligent to burn at high temperature all waste, making use of the heat generated, and then extract specific elements such as the residual metals from what remains.
Rubbish men of the past had better fun, worked less and had always cash in their back pocket.
Circa 1990.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ByUyXPA8SOA
Now in the age of hyper capital goods production they work harder for less pay and never get the girl.
Could it be because communities have been bankrupted by the consultants / spivs of totay and their " value added " not so little schemes.
Paul_K,
As I've previously alluded, as yet, there is found no real solution to waste disposal in all of its forms, both industrial and domestic and maybe all we do is to make idle speculation.
However, burning most of it would be preferable imho. There is some debate as the effectiveness of; scrubbers and other means of vital, necessary detoxification - not least where 'heavy' metals and complex organic compounds like the polychlorinates Dioxins and Phenols are concerned........ all of which don't provide the perfect outcome - even with the most scrupulous oversight - if the wind is blowing up your alley - so to speak.
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Professor Kendall,
Thank you for you comments, made, duly marked and inwardly imbibed, they are.
I've always like d the idea of storing obsolete resources in a central location so as future extraction techniques can regain them when they become economic.
That's why I like landfill as a green means of recycling. It really is more useful than re-distributing the resources at great cost immediately.
Bitter&Twisted, My sister lives in Brighton and has drunk deeply of the waters there.
I do sympathise.
It should be easy to tell when recycling works.
When they pay you to take your trash.
It used to be an extra charge if you wanted a yard waste bin, so they would haul it away. Then one day the bins showed up for every customer - no charge. Someone had apparently found a market for it turning it into compost.
I also agree with M Courtney - if there is no market for it, placing it in a landfill means you know where to find it when the day comes that it becomes a scarce resource.
Unfortunately this isn't just a matter of green policies going tits up. Thanks to Westminster's slavish policy of enacting EU Directives to the letter, the UK is legally obliged to follow the Landfill Directive, whatever the consequences.
The recycling 'industry' will only pay councils for stuff that they (the councils) made their taxpayers recycle if they can make a profit out of it. If the recyclers can't make a profit out of it, they won't buy it. As I've said before, the recycling industry is imploding; prices for steel can are down by 88%, glass by 67% and plastic by 55%.
If prices for recycled materials continue to drop; councils will either have to store this material until the price recovers, or send the unsold stuff to landfill - and pay the fines that the EU (via Westminster) has imposed for doing so. Either way, it's council taxpayers that will end up footing the bill.
Both landfilling and recycling cost money. The most economic path is often obscured by politics. The departments operating public landfills used to oppose recycling, because their major source of revenue was dumping fees. When the landfill was full, public money would be appropriated to build a new one. Where I live, they used to collect pre-sorted recyclables, but now they simply collect everything combined, forcing the public to pay to have their recyclables sorted. This proves unnecessary jobs and makes recycling more expensive.
I'm presume that some materials can be disposed of by recycling more cheaply than by landfilling in urban areas. However, governments rarely make decisions for economic reasons. After all, they are spending someone else's money.
Brilliant. In addition, people seem to forget that placing paper in landfills is a very effective form of carbon sequestration.
Frank, 9:46pm; Are there any landfill sites that are still owned by local. or national government?
Frank, you seem to be missing the point about many landfill sites. Local Authorities have had an obligation to deal with household waste. A lot (the majority?) of landfill schemes have been in holes previously dug for extraction of something else.
Some of these holes have been turned into wildlife reserves, others have been backfilled and landscaped. Others have been built on for housing or other commercial needs.
Using these holes in the ground for landfill, is normally commercially viable, plus the site then has a value for redevelopment. Generally (though not always) a win/win for the local community and the local authority.
Recycling is generally more expensive than landfilling. That is why Landfill Taxes were brought in, to make landfill a more expensive option. If recycling was cheaper, we would have 'rag and bone' men collecting recyclables for free.
The Green Blob masterplan is not working. Perhaps the recyclers should revert to a horse and cart, and recycle their flash cars and lifestyles, that taxpayers are subsidising.
In 1996, I wrote a long article for The New York Times Magazine arguing that the recycling process as we carried it out was wasteful. I presented plenty of evidence that recycling was costly and ineffectual, but its defenders said that it was unfair to rush to judgment. Noting that the modern recycling movement had really just begun just a few years earlier, they predicted it would flourish as the industry matured and the public learned how to recycle properly.</I>
Another green prediction going down the pan?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html?_r=0
GC: "Perhaps the recyclers should revert to a horse and cart,"
Funnily enough, down at the Salopian family's London residence (a small flat) we still have a local totter who comes round with a horse and cart, and the local plod still patrol on horses (once a week).
Sod all evidence of such use of equine transport up here in rural Powys. I also notice that the plastic paddy has admitted to being a white van man.
Golf Charlie wrote: "Frank, you seem to be missing the point about many landfill sites. Local Authorities have had an obligation to deal with household waste. A lot (the majority?) of landfill schemes have been in holes previously dug for extraction of something else."
I suspect most urban areas don't have large holes in the ground that are suitable for landfill - in other words, nearby, not likely to leak into the water table, minimal impact on current residents, etc. FWIW, my local landfill is publicly owned, above ground and operated by the state.
IMO, politics interferes with identifying and properly implementing the most cost effective way for my community to dispose of and/or recycle waste, particularly when the interests of public sector workers are involved.
Salopian, does the Local Authority treat the occasional discharges from the totter's horse as Toxic waste, and don full nuclear/chemical/bacterialogical warfare apparel, or do local residents regard it as traditional organic fertiliser, scoop it up, and spread it on their vegetables?
@Salopian
I am more of a human donkey really.
I get thrown in the back of a tranny so as to add ballast to the vehicle.
Its against my Franciscan inclinations to own a combustion vehicle.
GC: the discharges from the totter's horse and the plod horse's disappear rapidly, so it seems they are being used traditionally.
Up here, we 'rent' our field to our next-door farmer to graze his cattle, in return we get a cart-load of manure for the veg garden and our hedges cut.
If HMRC don't like this arrangement, they will get they the balance in a sack!
Salopian, your proposal for reaching a settlement with HMRC seems remarkably reasonable. A very large proportion of rural folk would like to settle up in a similar manner.
Successive UK Governments have relied on dispensing bullshit for years,, it is only fair that they should permit the debt to be repaid.
Golf
The words reasonable, HMRC, settle your debts etc etc. does not belong in the same skip.
Bullshit is a logical simulated emotional response.
It's part of the programme and is very effective.
"Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."
No matter how much tax collected it will never be enough as interest and depreciation on capital goods overproduced is exponential.
The beast must be feed.
British and now sadly Irish affliation to these anti states is a very curious phenomenon.
But I thought there was a shortage of holes.
GC:
I think plastic paddy's 'Franciscan inclinations' have overcome what little grasp of reality he actually had.
Salopian, DoC's use of "combustion vehicle" may be inspired by what many recycling schemes become. Certainly the money invested appears to go up in smoke, but is transformed into offshore bank accounts, what is left in putrid/toxic heaps on the ground, can smoulder for months, yet none of the energy is recovered. This is another fine example of the hypocrisy of Green Blob Economics, most of the real employment, is generated by the cleaning up the mess created.
Athelstan,
"As I've previously alluded, as yet, there is found no real solution to waste disposal in all of its forms, both industrial and domestic and maybe all we do is to make idle speculation."
Agreed. I am just very wary of flip solutions to what seems to be an increasingly complex problem. Dioxins are more likely to be produced in your garden bonfire or, more seriously, accidental fires started in stored waste facilities, than in a modern high-temperature incinerator. They are mainly produced by incomplete combustion. (Try Googling "Rotating Kiln technology" for some idea of where modern technology has got to on this score.)
The major problem is that waste does not naturally sort itself. Where industrial producers have a particular waste product, they do very often have (or are forced to have) their own local incineration facility or access to a shared facility. This makes a lot of sense to me.
The bigger problem is unsorted domestic and commercial waste. If the waste is inert or harmlessly compostable, then landfill makes sense, especially with low-cost methane capture. However, inevitably, some of this unsorted waste is dangerous if left in unsealed landfill.
While a lot of recycling schemes may be pure hooey, there is some benefit in educating the general public to separate out combustible packaging materials, bits of electronic kit which typically contain heavy metal and HDP, batteries etc. Whether these things end up being recycled or not, the sorting process itself should be valuable ultimately in reducing the waste management problem by allowing direction of different types of waste to the safest, most cost-effective solution. This hasn't happened yet, and I suspect that even the best waste management system will have imperfect sorting, but this crude separation is a necessary precursor, I believe.
I would have thought that the "seen to be greens" would welcome landfill with open arms what with sea level armageddon just around the corner.
How about "The slow green recycling machine" as a slogan/logo for landfill?
Paul_K
I think you're right about the dioxins. I can't remember where I read (or even if it's factually correct) that the Edinburgh Hogmanay fireworks emit more dioxins than all the European waste incinerators in a full year.
If my reading of the situation is correct the move away from landfill was sparked off, or at least given a boost, by a couple of the smaller EU countries complaining that they were running out of space. Enter the EU bureaucracy and the Greens who saw one more opportunity to make a drama out of a small inconvenience.
I'm grateful to Alan Kendall for putting me straight on the potential problems of using worked-out quarries but we seem to have managed pretty well for most of the last century and, as I've said before, it is one way of bringing potentially hazardous holes in the ground back into productive use as recreation areas, shopping malls, even housing estates provided possible toxicity has been avoided.
I described at as "recycling land", something they seem to have stopped making by and large!
Suffolk has an incinerator which produces electricity and was going to use the waste heat in a huge attached greenhouse. The latter part of the scheme has fallen through.
I've been trying to get the cabinet member to admit that the economics don't really add up -- without the landfill tax they certainly wouldn't -- but he's being evasive. Maybe with the falling value of recycled material he'll have to swallow his pride and accept the truth. Don't get me wrong, the best thing to do with waste is incineration, but my guess is that sorting it first is probably a waste (ahem) of time.
Anyway, here's the McCalmans' take:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a01x9PXN5dI
JF
Two billion quid unceremoniously thrown down the loo and barely a peep from the MSM except for one article. Possibly because by GangGreen's standards two billion is small beer when you're in the business of blithely burning a trillion pound hole in the taxpayers' back pocket in pursuit of an infantile fantasy. An infantile fantasy (AGW) that most infants wouldn't even be taken in by if the truth were known.
We put our food waste in a small bin which is collected on a weekly basis. We are told by the council that it is used to generate electricity, although they don't explain the detail, or why 'windfalls' from the apple tree aren't food. Personally, I don't think they'd get enough electricity from our waste to move the truck from our house to the next, let alone cover the labour costs!
@Golf
Taxing or not taxing offshore locations will not stop the machine of state from raising prices.
These virgin island special people are merely acting rationally, the claws of state can however clench at any time.
Ps
Cleaning out a hoarders or dead persons house is perhaps the most energy efficient means of getting a otherwise unsaleable house on the market.
It merely requires a little beer and diesel.
However despite a abundance of houses in the Irish market the prices will not drop.
The law of supply and demand appears to be broken.
Only social credit theory explains the current absence of a closed production / consumption loop.
We need to spend time attempting to compost the Green Blob. Even if nothing useful is ever produced (based on past performance, this is likely) the environment will be a better place.
The spiv understands at least subconsciously the governments primary role.
To raise prices regardless of its absurdity.
Should we blame the spiv or the policy of the deep state?
Just got one of those " Why we should stay in the EU " government leaflets through my letterbox .
Straight in my wheelie bin straight to the London Borough of Lewisham ,Bromley ,Greenwich ,Southwark ,Westminster Rubbish Incerarator in Bermonsey
Best way to recycle Bullsh.t I suppose.
OK, who let the Dork back out of his box?
Hey Dork,
You know that course you've been on? The one called 'How to Write Clearly and Succinctly, thus Ensuring Your Readers Understand What the Bloody Hell You're On About'?
I'd ask for your money back if I were you.
@Shindig
I ask simple questions in the main as they tend to be more interesting.
Shame you do not get it.
I work from the premise of abundance rather then scarcity which can be a problem for most programmed people.
Again the simple question is......
If stuff can be produced so cheaply or in the case of Irish houses recycled very cheaply (new build continues to be very real resource intensive) then why is stuff so expensive?
One of the methods used is to add unneeded value on consumer goods which needlessly increases complexity but is sold as a must have by the advertising or green corporate industry. (LED lights etc)
I have been a victim of this myself as my one consumer weakness in amateur telescopes.
Oh to have a 90mm $5,000 Questar ( a 1950s design icon still in production) or a simple 80mm F15 - 20 achromatic refractor which can be perfectly made and sold for less then $500.
Both have roughly the same performance.
In the case of Irelande the corporate system will not pay the bobs for simple housing solutions.
It is however prepared to pay more bobs for more complex solutions.
Again if Dork was minister of the economy the steel industry would also collapse but not for the current industrial sabotage reasons.
There would simply be very little intrinsic demand for the stuff.
Sorry, Dork.
You're still spouting incomprehensible drivel!
@Shindig.
I take it you are not a engineer?
Again why is cheap stuff so bloody expensive.
Any answers?
Insulting somebody over the Internet is easier I guess.
Dork,
Check your assumptions at the door.
I'm getting quite a few internet video adverts for the stay-in campaign. I haven't tried looking into who pays for these adverts, but I'm not even sure if Google always makes that information available.
Funnily enough, I have an engineering degree.
But one doesn't need an engineering degree - or even a GCSE in Media Studies - to spot an unrelenting stream of nonsense.
I'm working on the Random Dork Comment Generator, which should be fun.
ex GMU economics professor Russ Roberts, of econtalk.org, has an episode about the economics of recycling with prof. Mike Munger ...
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/07/munger_on_recyc.html
highly recommended ....
(as most econtalk episodes btw ...)
The 2cv ( designed in the late 30s) has no less fuel economy then today's economy cars.
However today's cars contain more stuff to recycle.
They have more bells and whistles.
So as to recover costs the firm's " add value" or complexity over time.
This is the most obvious observation of our current production / consumption system otherwise known as the economy.
How is this nonsense?
This is a correct observation.
I
Julian Flood / English Pensioner
The Council is not allowed to use rubbish to generate electricity apparently. One of the Scottish power stations (I forget the details but there are plenty of contributors on here who can help me out!) was either designed or converted to use a waste product only to have one of the environmental agencies tell them they couldn't because it was a waste product.
Windfall apples are not food. I mean ... yeuk! who would want to eat something that has been on the ground? They are garden refuse and must be treated as such.
Reminds me of the story of the man who refused to eat tongue for breakfast. "I wouldn't touch anything that's been in an animal's mouth. Bring me a boiled egg."
Dork,
Today's cars are safer, faster, last longer, are more reliable and do more than cars designed in the 1930's.
Based on the proliferation of private auto ownership, I would suggest that most people see them as more affordable than the late 1930's.
Dublin and Cork have much more auto traffic per capita now than in the 1930's, for instance.
hunter
The availability of reliable, cheap, second hand cars is probably a major factor in the well being of large numbers of low paid British workers.
@Hunter.
Tell that to people when their computer chip goes wonky.
Cars are now designed to entrap people within the value added chain.
There is a reason why Morrocan taxi drivers drive pre late 1980s Mercs.
They can fix it themselves.
The 2cv famously required a piece of wire and a pliars more then half the time.
(People need to travel faster and longer as their purchasing power cannot buy local goods.
2cvs travelling at 20mph would have extreme difficulty in killing anybody despite their lack of safety features.
Anyhow something or somebody will kill you eventually.
Refer to the famous Bill Hicks sketch on non- smokers.
It's breaking news for health fascists but they die also.
The car safety programme was merely another thinly disguised mechanism to add value / increase costs.)
The small 1mile drive to the local shop becomes a 26 mile marathon to the discount store.
All of this data is available in Ireland as some rural areas came late to the scarcity party.
"What's causing the failure of recycling in the UK is complex."
Good start - almost makes sense.
"I have social credit beliefs (I.e. In the modern world capital dominates nearly all and dwarfs labour inputs ) "
Capital dominates nearly all what? Capital in what form?
"But rubbish collection and sorting remains one of the few industrial tasks remaining that requires large amounts of human labour."
Not in the depots I've seem.The automation is breathtaking.
"The question is not the cost of this task but why the residents of each locality is bankrupt from charges added on."
No, you've lost me on this one. Residents of what locality? Where are you talking about? And how is they [sic] bankrupt - what on earth are 'charges added on'?
"Charges that subsequently disappear from local and indeed national money exchange."
Ah the old Dorkism - national money exchange. 'Two fingers' in the popular Dork of Cork drinking game. Still don't know what the hell it means, though.
"Spivs / consultants are taking the cream."
Hasty howwid people.
"Labour theory of value concepts still matter for such tasks."
Best not to think about this sentence too much - your ears will bleed.
"The now privatised rubbish men get paid very little for a tough and dirty job."
I was a bin-man in the early Eighties, when you had to lift it into your shoulder, having gone round to the house's back door to get it. And then carry it to the road, where you'd find the driver, for a larf, had gone on a hundred yards. It was dirty, smelly and badly paid back then, so no change there.
"Today typically they are eastern European lads."
Like every manual job in the country, then.
Keep it coming Dork - we love it.
@Shindig
Capital in what form?
Machines requiring oil etc etc , they replace human labour.
This is a good thing.
However there is a catch.
Depreciation.
National accounts add depreciation of chiefly capital goods (see cars etc) to Gdp.
This comes as quite a shock for most.
That rust adds to your sense of wellbeing or wealth, It obviously does not.
There is no monetary compensation for this imbalance of cost accounting in current systems.
Anyhow this observation is at the very core of the social credit critic of the modern production / consumption system.
In this sense it goes beyond the typical anti usury arguments which had validity in the medival market fair where human labour was a large factor of production.