Collection: Recyclables

We are all being encouraged to recycle a higher proportion of the resources that we use. Making this easier ensures we do it more readily and more effectively.

This section discusses:

Existing Provision

What

Most councils in the UK now collect at least the following major categories of material for recycling:

A plethora of other categories are also collected but these few make up the bulk of the recycled tonnage.

How

Whether we use something again, recycle it or throw it away is often determined by the relative cost and ease of getting this one cleaned, recharged or refurbished versus getting hold of a replacement. Things have improved over recent years and we now have:

Volume and Frequency

Unfortunately the weekly (or longer) intervals do mean that we all end up with significant volumes of recyclables cluttering up our kitchens, yard or gardens. As each category needs its own bag or box, some houses are being supplied with up to nine containers!

Financial Model

This is currently more “stick” than “carrot” with penalties being exacted or at least proposed for throwing too much away rather than recycling it and for getting the wrong items in a particular receptacle.

Providers

Councils are largely responsible for collection of recyclables though in many cases this is subcontracted to specialist firms.

Trends

Public awareness of the need to recycle is certainly growing - but so too is the complexity of the sorting and collection process.

With Localnet

What

Localnet will not, of itself, change what is collected for recycling. Many of the other services already discussed should help to reduce the amount of packaging, of food waste and so on hence the need for recycling should be lower.

However, there will still be glass bottles and jars, cans and paper to be recycled.

How

The key difference between a localnet area and one without is the ease with which recycling can be achieved. By making it easy and rewarding to recycle as high a proportion of the unavoidable waste as possible, localnet will encourage much higher recycling rates than are achieved today. We can increase the proportion of goods we recycle by:

Every box used to ship items to a dwelling has to be recovered so it can be used again. As these boxes have to travel back to the hub, they might as well contain something rather than nothing. Putting waste paper into a PaperBox as soon as you have emptied it is easy. It's right there as you open the envelopes and put them back in it for recycling. Yesterday's newspaper goes in it as you take today's out.

Similarly, the  OmniBox your groceries arrive in can be put straight back into the localnet delivery hatch and filled throughout the day with cans, bottles etc. as these are emptied. Boxes are collected daily and the different categories of recyclables are sorted at the LocalHub into sizable skips that can be transported efficiently to the next stage of the recycling process. As collections are made daily, the volume of material does not build up significantly.

Until people are familiar with recycling, they may not know which of the materials and containers they are throwing away can be recycled. The more items that are ordered via the system, the easier it is for someone to look up the packaging type and get advice on what to do with it.

A significant proportion of the recyclables in my bin are unwanted mail. If all catalogues, fliers and other bulk delivered items were made to include a barcode identifying them, it would be very easy to levy a small charge for delivery and a larger charge for each one that was returned the next day – i.e. put straight back in the PaperBox from which it came and heading for the recycling system. As the recycling system becomes automated, this charge could be estimated by manually inspecting the contents of a small proportion – maybe five or ten percent – of boxes. The returned junk mail in these could be barcode scanned and the tariff pro-rated up to the full delivery cycle. This would make all junk mail providers think more carefully about whether or not they should send the item in the first place. I, for one, am sick of receiving catalogues almost daily from stationery, electronics goods and clothing suppliers who I only ever shop online with and hence never use the printed catalogues.

Making the collection and recycling of waste paper secure avoids the need for consumers (and businesses) to shred mildly sensitive documents. As we have become more concerned with identity theft, anything with your name and address on, details of your purchases and so on is now shredded as a matter of course by many people. This is not only wasteful of electricity, it’s also messy (I’ve never emptied the bin without getting some shreds and paper dust on the carpet). The typical shredder in many people’s homes is limited to maybe four or five sheets at a time and while this is fine for individual bills and letters, it’s not fun trying to clear out your filing cabinet e.g. shredding all credit card statements more than a couple of years old, as I would dearly love to do if only I had the time. If the recycling service is made as secure as existing business shredding service collections, then we will not only feel comfortable putting items in the box for recycling, we’ll also be encouraged to keep less and declutter our offices.

Volume and Frequency

The UK media has had a field day whipping up public opinion against moves to collect refuse fortnightly rather than weekly. The public, quite rightly do not want twice as much rubbish festering outside their doors for twice as long as at present.

When I was growing up in the early seventies, we had one metal dustbin and a weekly collection – and I don’t recall it ever overflowing.  Today properties in our village have:

For a small terraced house, just finding somewhere to put all of these is a challenge. Juggling them every time a bottle or can has to go in one that’s not on the top of the resultant pile is a nuisance and lugging them all out to the road once a week and back again later that day makes putting our old bin out seem much less onerous than it felt thirty years ago.

If collections could only be more rather than less frequent we could all reclaim space in our houses and worry less about smells and damaging our back as we drag overflowing boxes and bags to and fro. Today’s refuse lorries are noisy, heavy, smelly and expensive. Although an incredibly valuable and essential job, being a refuse collector is probably not the career of choice for many who do it. If we could completely eliminate the need for heavy refuse lorries and full-time refuse collectors, we probably should.

Reducing the volumes of waste generated in the first place and collecting what little is left on a daily basis means it becomes a part of a process and job that is overall much more pleasant than the traditional refuse collector’s lot.

Financial Model

It only makes sense to recycle where the total cost – monetary and environmental - of recovering the material is less than the impact of land-filling and producing more from raw materials. We therefore have to:

We also need to consider financially rewarding consumers for recycling. There is a danger here that you inadvertently reward them for having consumed more in the first place but localnet certainly makes it relatively easy to weigh the amount of each material collected from each dwelling and convert this into money or at least credit on the system. Children incentivised to recycle will quickly become walking encyclopaedias on the subject!

Providers

Localnet staff would collect recyclables as an integral part of their visit to a property.

Evolution

Localnet should start to influence the way goods are packaged - so that there are fewer glass jars and cardboard boxes being used and hence needing to be recycled.

 

Comparison

The table below assesses the impact of localnet on this service on a scale of -5 to +5 (details here)

  Existing services As part of localnet Score
Scope

Wide range of items recycled.

 Same range. 0
Frequency Weekly collection typical. Daily collection. +4
Security Waste paper vulnerable to snoopers. Waste paper not readily accessible. +1
Convenience Have multiple boxes lying around and have to put them out weekly. One box in localnet delivery hatch at a time, Multiple compartments in it. +2
Cost Dedicated collection network, vehicles and staff. Uses existing network, Exploits otherwise empty return leg. +3
Quality More items per pickup make it harder to spot items in wrong container. Fewer items per container. +!
Carbon Footprint Dedicated collection journeys Shared transport overheads. +3
Time Need to put bins out or travel to collection points. Trivial to put waste in cupboard. +1
Resources Used Dedicated collection vehicles. Shared vehicles. +2
Reuse & Recycling Improving but long way to go. More reusable containers less to recycle but easier hence better percentage recycled. +2
Landfill Waste Not applicable. Not applicable. 0
Other Differentiators Reward scheme possible. +1

Services