Bin charge protests and breastfeeding

Cork

There are bring centres all over the place - Cardboard banks, paper banks, bottle banks etc.

It is up to people to use these facilities. Thats why they are there.

therecklessone

Originally posted by Cork
There are bring centres all over the place - Cardboard banks, paper banks, bottle banks etc.

It is up to people to use these facilities. Thats why they are there.

And it is up to our government to ensure that this waste is recycled not dumped in landfill sites. They should either:

(a) provide public recycling facilites, or
(b) incentivise private operated facilites, both profit and non-profit.

That is why they are there.

Cork

The bring centres are there. If people want to use them - they are there.

If they prefer to put trash in their bins - they can do that.

The choice is 100% theirs.

Bring Centres are all over the place.

monument

Originally posted by Cork
There are bring centres all over the place - Cardboard banks, paper banks, bottle banks etc.

It is up to people to use these facilities. Thats why they are there.

That's why they are all most part loop holes!

therecklessone

Originally posted by Cork


Bring Centres are all over the place.

A bin by any other name...

Typedef

Right lads, I'm assuming you are referring to page 8 of 14 (there are not 27 pages FYI monument), where there is a 96.2% sending of (organic ie biodegradeable waste) to landfill and 71.6 of glass to landfill, great, so what, there is no reference to substances allocated (in 2001) for recycling (and collected as such) going to landfill.

Let me reiterate this point (Sparks/Monument) "there is no reference to substances allocated (in 2001) for recycling (and collected as such) going to landfill.", you're stated source of 'proof' does not back up you're allegations, so either you don't understand the figures you are reading or you are being delibrately decietful!

Again, Sparks/Monument, you have either delibrately inferred facts (without evidence) or you are delibrately stating a mistruth, as I have already stated, if it were the case that 'batteries' for example, brought to government recycling bring-centres were subsequently sent to landfill, there would be an overwhelming case for suing the Republic's government and taking any number of civil redress actions in the courts.

I trust this point is proved sufficently (disproving your two claims... which is not incidentally the remit of one who asks for evidence in debate)? Simply parroting this claim again and again, doesn't change the fact, it's baseless and that the 'evidence' (I use the term lightly) provided, does not coroborrate your claims!

Honestly, how you do discern that materiale marked for recycling is being landfilled? There have been no reports of this in the Irish media, the document in question 'never once says that' and I think the FUD[1] you two are generating on this point in order to embibe 'merit' to your argument is intellectually insulting, perhaps that's an accident, I suspect not.

[1]FUD. Fear uncertainty and doubt.

monument

Originally posted by Typedef
Right lads, I'm assuming you are referring to page 8 of 14 (there are not 27 pages FYI monument), where there is a 96.2% sending of (organic ie biodegradeable waste) to landfill and 71.6 of glass to landfill, great, so what, there is no reference to substances allocated (in 2001) for recycling (and collected as such) going to landfill.

Let me reiterate this point (Sparks/Monument) "there is no reference to substances allocated (in 2001) for recycling (and collected as such) going to landfill.", you're stated source of 'proof' does not back up you're allegations, so either you don't understand the figures you are reading or you are being delibrately decietful!

Again, Sparks/Monument, you have either delibrately inferred facts (without evidence) or you are delibrately stating a mistruth, as I have already stated, if it were the case that 'batteries' for example, brought to government recycling bring-centres were subsequently sent to landfill, there would be an overwhelming case for suing the Republic's government and taking any number of civil redress actions in the courts.

I trust this point is proved sufficently (disproving your two claims... which is not incidentally the remit of one who asks for evidence in debate)? Simply parroting this claim again and again, doesn't change the fact, it's baseless and that the 'evidence' (I use the term lightly) provided, does not coroborrate your claims!

Honestly, how you do discern that materiale marked for recycling is being landfilled? There have been no reports of this in the Irish media, the document in question 'never once says that' and I think the FUD[1] you two are generating on this point in order to embibe 'merit' to your argument is intellectually insulting, perhaps that's an accident, I suspect not.

[1]FUD. Fear uncertainty and doubt.

Dated April 2002 on the Australian Council of Recyclers’ website – comparing Australian recycling rates to other countries Ireland rates of recycling are listed as follows - 3% Total Plastics Packaging Recycling, 31% Total Plastics Packaging Recycling, 16% Aluminum Can/Packaging Recycling. http://www.acor.org.au/pdfs/nolanituinternationalstudy.pdf

A Google cached page http://www.google.ie/search?q=cache:LfyPpUzcuacJ:www.jxj.com/wmw/news/2002_05_04_c.html+recycling+rates+for+Ireland&hl=en&ie=UTF-8) of this site http://www.jxj.com/wmw/news/2002_05_04_c.html lists Ireland’s aluminium can recycling rate at 26% which would say over 70% of aluminium cans go to landfill.

Even the government’s Race Against Waste website quotes recycling rates which fits within the 70%/96% figures…

“There has been some progress towards increased recovery and recycling of waste:
• Household and commercial waste recycling rates have increased from 9.0% in 1998 to 13.3% in 2001.
• Packaging recycling rates have increased from 14.8% in 1998 to 25.3% in 2001;

http://www.raceagainstwaste.com/prod.htm

I was finding it hard to find a few sources, and then ended up finding one on the raceagainstwaste.com!!!

MrPudding

I may be reading those links incorrectly but they seem to be refering to general household waste not waste taken to recycling centers. If this is the case Typedef's points still stand.

MrP

monument

Originally posted by Typedef
There have been no reports of this in the Irish media,

Because – I can only imagine – for good reason, any news editor would not think the story is news worthy, as although the figures are low they are very slowly improving so any news story would just be seen as government bashing. However, I’d imagine it would be possible to outline such in a Prime Time type report, but the figures on their own wouldn’t be substantial enough to make such a report - I’d imagine.

monument

Originally posted by MrPudding
I may be reading those links incorrectly but they seem to be refering to general household waste not waste taken to recycling centers. If this is the case Typedef's points still stand.

MrP

Sorry, yes, you're right.

monument

While the National Waste Database Report 2001 is still not currently online – although the fact sheets which it is based on are online – I was (maybe wrongly???) trusting Sparks when he said it was his source. Maybe he can quote the report?

Apologies for been native in trusting with out seeing the figures first hand – it’s not something I normally do.

therecklessone

Originally posted by MrPudding
I may be reading those links incorrectly but they seem to be refering to general household waste not waste taken to recycling centers. If this is the case Typedef's points still stand.

MrP

In a fit of post-night duty boredom I went back and looked at the links provided to the EPA site and came to the same conclusion. So I retract much of what I said about recycled waste being dumped in landfill sites. Sorry.

Sparks

Firstly Typedef, I don't care for the level of personal aggression. I've not done anything I can see to warrant it, so please desist.

As to the figures regarding waste disposal, I thought perhaps you were correct and I have been mistaken, so I rechecked through the EPA's site over the last day or two. And you are correct, the quoted figures in Table six are not what they initally appeared to be. They are for overall waste amounts at their initial collection points rather than at their final destination, as I thought.

However, I'm afraid that does not mean that I was incorrect in stating that waste seperated out for recycling gets dumped to landfill. Firstly, the EPA's report in section one of the 2001 database report on page seven in table 4 notes that it is taking the figures for landfilled/recovered waste from two sources - landfilled waste amounts from the landfill sites and recovered waste amounts from recycling organisations like Repak and the various civic amenity sites around the country. Now me, on reading it the first time, I missed that small note (to be fair, it's a footnote in a large report). But the problem is that while it doesn't say what I thought it said - it doesn't say what Typedef says either. Civic amenity sites, according to the same report (section five, page four) are not normally recycling centres though they're listed as recovery sites and thus are counted towards the recovery rate.

In addition, members of the public can bring waste materials to civic waste facilities, also known as civic amenity sites. In general, these sites accept bulkier items such as fridges and freezers and household hazardous wastes as well as the waste types accepted at bring bank sites. A total of 53 such sites are currently in existence; 35 are located at existing landfill sites , 11 are associated with transfer stations, one is associated with a composting facility and six are stand alone sites.

This means that that recovery rate from municipal waste is actually a misleading statistic - because out of that 305,000 tonnes reported as recovered, an unknown but significant amount is now in landfill. (I say unknown but significant because the majority of civic amenity centres are on landfills, and those on transfer stations are not necessarily transferring waste to recycling plants :

Alternatively, it may be taken initially to a transfer station where some processing of the waste occurs. For disposal of waste, this processing may include bulking and baling of the waste prior to dispatch to the disposal facility. Where waste is being prepared for recovery, it may be sorted and stored until sufficient quantity is collected prior to dispatch to a recovery facility in Ireland or abroad.

(That's section 5 page 7 of the same report).

So basicly, what does this mean? It means that the statistics I've been quoting are in fact incorrect - but that doesn't mean what I've been saying is incorrect. In fact, what's in error with what I was saying was the figures, not the sentiment. In order to determine the actual figure we were arguing over (how much waste seperated for recycling actually goes to landfill), we'll have to make several FOI requests. Each local authority collects statistics on their own waste collection - how much each bring bank, civic amenity centre, kerbside collection scheme and so on all collect. We need those numbers - and the EPA doesn't collect them. Up until a year ago, that would have been a trivial matter - make the requests and I'd have the numbers and we could settle this. Today, each request would cost me in excess of twenty euro apiece, and there are a lot of them - one to each local authority in the country. (A more cynical person might say that was the point of the exercise, to stifle informed criticism of government policy....)

So Typedef, I'm afraid I can no longer give a number. I can just point to the fact that there are recycling centres that landfill the waste brought to them, and that there are too many bring centres for the processing capacity this country has at present. Recall, please, that there are more bring centres today than there were before Irish Glass shut down, cutting our glass recycling capacity by 75% or more. It's not logical to assume that all the glass brought to bring centres is recycled, given an increase in glass brought to bring centres and a massive decrease in recycling capability. And this holds true also for the other kinds of recyclable waste. We just don't have the facilities to process what we seperate out.

As a footnote to all of this, I'd like to point out one last thing: namely that while the EPAs figures are now suspect to me, they do point out that the bulk of the waste in this country is not houshold in nature, by a large margin...

amp

Originally posted by Sparks
Firstly Typedef, I don't care for the level of personal aggression. I've not done anything I can see to warrant it, so please desist.

I'm not seeing any personal aggression. Pm me if you feel different.

amp

This thread, while it's like an old friend it's been here so long has reached it's end. If there are unresolved issues or interesting parts of it that have branched off please feel free to start new threads. Thanks to all who participated.