new plastic recycling rules?

Hitman3000

Oldtree wrote:

I think it's more along the lines of the shops accepting back the plastic there and then. Maby shoppers bring their own bags along. Certainly from a recycling point of view the plastic would be much cleaner if collected at this point. Could be that the shops could find some easy of reuseing the trays etc.

Not going to happen, shops will not willing increase the cost of waste disposal for themselves. A bag of chips for e.g., how would the shop reuse the soft plastic? Are you just limiting it to fruit? Plenty of shops sell loose fruit and veg. The consumer decides which they want packaged or loose, the shop is just catering for demand.

Andy From Sligo

Did I hear / read though by law the shop has to accept the packaging back if the consumer doesn't want the packaging? I didn't think they were allowed to refuse the packaging?

Andy From Sligo

Haven't we got to a stage in life where packaged fruit and the like is cheaper than buying loose fruit and veg ironically?

Oldtree

Hitman3000 wrote: »

Not going to happen, shops will not willing increase the cost of waste disposal for themselves. A bag of chips for e.g., how would the shop reuse the soft plastic? Are you just limiting it to fruit? Plenty of shops sell loose fruit and veg. The consumer decides which they want packaged or loose, the shop is just catering for demand.

Shops are already helping out taking back batteries and white goods. They helped to get rid of the plastic bag at checkout more or less.

I'm not so much talking about them reusing the plastic bag, but putting the plastic bag back into the recycling stream with the plastic bag being much cleaner than it would have been if taken home and then recycled.

As you point out there will be difficulties, but not ones that cannot be surmounted with a bit of imagination. There may be a cost involved but I can't see them worrying about it as like the plastic bag, once one does it the others will follow so as not to be left behind.

Maby it's a question of all useing similar plastic packaging with different paper inserts when it's not practical to move to paper packaging.

Oldtree

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

Did I hear / read though by law the shop has to accept the packaging back if the consumer doesn't want the packaging? I didn't think they were allowed to refuse the packaging?

Any links to that Andy?

mike_2009

You mean this, measures 29 (i):
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1996/act/10/section/29/enacted/en/html
(i) requiring the owner or manager of a supermarket, service station or other sales outlet to provide, free of charge, specified facilities at such an outlet for the removal by customers of packaging from products or substances purchased by them at that outlet, and receptacles for the deposit of such packaging,

Associated info:

Journal Article here:
https://www.thejournal.ie/packaging-supermarkets-3471756-Jul2017/
It’s understood the minister is looking to European countries, such as France, where many supermarkets have recycling bins at their exits. Customers are encouraged to remove the packaging from items they have purchased, before returning home.
The minister plans to raise the idea of recycling facilities at supermarkets at the next meeting of the Retail Sector Action Group on Preventing Food Waste, which was established by the government in March.

Nothing about it in the Retail Sector Action Group on Preventing Food Waste agenda or minutes though:
https://www.dccae.gov.ie/en-ie/environment/topics/sustainable-development/waste-prevention-programme/Pages/The-Retail-Action-Group0616-6288.aspx

Andy From Sligo

Oldtree wrote: »

Any links to that Andy?

no soory not yet - i will look again see if i can find something . or maybe its just more shops being more helpful than others and taking it back as a favour to the customer to keep them happy and make them come back ...

dr.fuzzenstein

IMO the only way for the situation to improve is more regulations.
Force shops to have prominent bins for any waste, levy charges for any unnecessary packaging, offer incentives for unpackaged goods and get a useful recycling system going.
Because without pressure the shops and manufacturers or even the consumers will do SFA.

The new radio ads annoy the ****e out of me every time I hear them due to the patronising tone used, its the same for any government sponsored private enterprise advert.

The way refuse is handled in this country is a joke. We allowed glass recycling centres to be closed down so the sites could be sold to property developers. We export most of our recycling which ends up causing more pollution and environmental damage. We allow semi state companies charge us for collecting our rufuse who then burn it to generate electricity for which we are charged for using.

In other countries France was an example when my wife lived there (all be it over 10years sgo) you were actually paid for your recycling as it has a monetary value. As pointed out by another poster earlier in Germany recycling centres are fee to use and provide a far larger array of facilities then the privately owned recycling centres run on behalf of the local councils that we have to pay just to get entry to.

The sentiment that the world has to get in line regarding plastic packaging is not one I disagree with but it's not going to happen any time soon as the big players are to tied in with manufacturing companies for this to happen.

What should be done is making it a local and national election issue especially in terms of how it's the householder that's being royally screwed over in this country.

Tony EH

Skedaddle wrote: »

All of the burden is being put on consumers and in a lot of cases, we don’t actually have choices. Or, have extremely limited ones and we are being corralled into using these products by the manufacturers, distributors and retailers who don’t give a damn about the environment in reality.

And as long as we keep beating OURSELVES over the head about it, nothing will change.

All this guff about about the consumer being the bad guy in this and more levies and whatnot is a load of old bollocks.

The pressure should be put on manufacturing to NOT USE SO MUCH PLASTIC PACKAGING in the first bloody place.

Is it any wonder there's some people who believe it's one big fat con game to gouge more and more money from people.

Andy From Sligo

why are manufacturers and food suppliers using so much plastic these days though we live in an age where manufacturers and suppliers are always finding ways to save money by supplying their goods but cutting costs where they can to maximize profit.

So if they just simply cut down on plastic packaging or cut it out altogether surely they would be cutting down on their overheads and making more profit? - so it doesnt seem logical a lot of the time for them to package up stuff so much in plastic, they would surely save money by cutting down or cutting out plastic ... or are they just passing the cost of their plastic packaging, they are using to make their products look good ... to the consumer! - thats more than likely it.

Now also we as consumers want stuff we buy not to go off quick or get spoilt - years ago when there wasnt all this stuff in plastic packaging we used it quick, before it went off , it was more likely packed in brown paper bag or a glass jar even a lot of the sliced bread on the shelves were sold in wax paper outer wrapper and not wrapped in plastic - maybe us as consumers could lower our expectations too on that score then and go back to that time where we buy stuff fresh and use it within a couple of days and we would be ok and wont need this plastic stuff to make the produce last longer?

dr.fuzzenstein

I'm not a fan of punitive taxation to steer consumer and manufacturer behavior, but for something like this I would be very much in favour of a €5 packaging levy:

Oldtree

That's awful lazy, peeled oranges ffs.......

Andy From Sligo

Oldtree wrote: »

That's awful lazy, peeled oranges ffs.......

maybe, but i suppose if you had arthritis or disabled that affected hand/fingers, an orange could be hard to peel?

Andy From Sligo

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

maybe, but i suppose if you had arthritis or disabled that affected hand/fingers, an orange could be hard to peel?

My dads got arthritis in his hands and he just cuts them into segments. Might be an option when it gets worse and he can't safely handle a knife, but I don't really think he is the market the manufacturer is aiming at.

As for the boiled eggs I'm sitting here trying to thing who the hell would buy them but maybe that's just me as I like them scrambled

Andy From Sligo

DubInMeath wrote: »

My dads got arthritis in his hands and he just cuts them into segments. Might be an option when it gets worse and he can't safely handle a knife, but I don't really think he is the market the manufacturer is aiming at.

As for the boiled eggs I'm sitting here trying to thing who the hell would buy them but maybe that's just me as I like them scrambled

cant beat a lovely boiled egg with a nice salad ...

Andy From Sligo

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

cant beat a lovely boiled egg with a nice salad ...

Yeah but don't think they'd quite cut the mustard :-)

Must be loaded with all sorts of crap to stop a bad case of the trots.

Hitman3000

It's amazing the amount of stuff that nature already supplies in a package, yet suppliers feel they need an extra layer of packaging. As a child I remember trips to the green grocer, everything loose including potatoes paper bag was the only packaging available.

irishgeo

just a point cellophane isnt a plastic, so it will decompose in a landfill

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane

Andy From Sligo

that bag levy (bag for life) must have been a great success for the shops - I mean years ago when they used paper bags , they would have had to buy these at the cash & carry and in quite a considerable quantity as well, must of cost them a bit at the end of the day and they would have got through quite a lot 'giving them away' when a customer bought something from the shop - but now its on the onus for the consumer to bring their own bags now or buy a plastic carrier bag or buy a bag for life - well thats saved them having to supply paper bags now to the customer.

Hitman3000

Andy From Sligo wrote:

that bag levy (bag for life) must have been a great success for the shops - I mean years ago when they used paper bags , they would have had to buy these at the cash & carry and in quite a considerable quantity as well, must of cost them a bit at the end of the day and they would have got through quite a lot 'giving them away' when a customer bought something from the shop - but now its on the onus for the consumer to bring their own bags now or buy a plastic carrier bag or buy a bag for life - well thats saved them having to supply paper bags now to the customer.

Paper bags are still available in shops at no cost to the customer, for none grocery items.

quentingargan

irishgeo wrote: »

just a point cellophane isnt a plastic, so it will decompose in a landfill

Who is going to go through my rubbish, put the cellophane into land fill and send the cling film to the incinerator?

I can't help thinking that capacity and appetite of incinerators is contributing to a willingness by governments to accept this reduction in recycling.:rolleyes:

The Princess Bride

I do my absolute best to cut down on packaging when shopping.
And I recycle as best I can too.

It's good having a clear list online.
Alas there are those who can't access this list.
I know my 83 year old dad is very good at recycling but doesn't use the internet.

I know it'd mean more paper circulating, but a copy of this list needs to go through every letterbox in the country.

Sad to think that you'll always have thickos putting their rubbish and used nappies in recycling bins anyway.

New Home

It would be dead easy to do, too, the binmen could deliver them when they collect the bins.

Andy From Sligo

The Princess Bride wrote: »

I do my absolute best to cut down on packaging when shopping.
And I recycle as best I can too.

It's good having a clear list online.
Alas there are those who can't access this list.
I know my 83 year old dad is very good at recycling but doesn't use the internet.

I know it'd mean more paper circulating, but a copy of this list needs to go through every letterbox in the country.

Sad to think that you'll always have thickos putting their rubbish and used nappies in recycling bins anyway.

unless you get dirty feckers who tip them by a river - like this at one of our rivers near by us the other week!! :mad:

New Home

That makes my blood BOIL!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:

Number of bags of rubbish and car parts (doors, bumpers) dumped at the last roundabout out of Kells and have been there for over a week.

When the town and county council were called, they told my cousin that removal of such material wasn't their issue. When asked whose issue it was he was told by the town council to call the county council and the same by the county council. Last person he talked to in the town council said that the removal of such material was the responsibility of the adjacent landowner. I can't see this as being the case surely or have we just reached a point where elected local representives are just that useless.

Andy From Sligo

New Home wrote: »

That makes my blood BOIL!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:

really sickening - these people should be done big time - I dont know if the perpetrators were ever caught

quentingargan

New Home wrote: »

It would be dead easy to do, too, the binmen could deliver them when they collect the bins.

Although it is still a predominantly male profession, apparently they are now waste management and disposal technicians.:pac:

elperello

DubInMeath wrote: »

Number of bags of rubbish and car parts (doors, bumpers) dumped at the last roundabout out of Kells and have been there for over a week.

When the town and county council were called, they told my cousin that removal of such material wasn't their issue. When asked whose issue it was he was told by the town council to call the county council and the same by the county council. Last person he talked to in the town council said that the removal of such material was the responsibility of the adjacent landowner. I can't see this as being the case surely or have we just reached a point where elected local representives are just that useless.

Kells town council does not exist anymore. It is now a municipal district under the management of Meath County Council.

As for the genius who said it was the responsibility of the adjacent landowner, he was just talking rubbish!

Oldtree

irishgeo wrote: »

just a point cellophane isnt a plastic, so it will decompose in a landfill

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane

It was more what it does within the recycling stream that had me concerned. Need I not be?

elperello

elperello wrote: »

Kells town council does not exist anymore. It is now a municipal district under the management of Meath County Council.

As for the genius who said it was the responsibility of the adjacent landowner, he was just talking rubbish!

Thanks and I stand corrected, my fault I have a bad habit of using the old identifiers for town councils etc.

sophiewilson

We should decrease the use of plastic bags.
There are part of the ocean that is covered with plastic and it's a big impact o the animals.

PoulM

We could go back to living without plastic. It worked 100 years ago. Not sure consumers will accept, but they will have to get used to living without, when oil runs out. Looking forward to that

New Home

I was thinking about that, the other day - I'd say they'd have to invent a substitute for the medical field - can you imagine the tubes for intravenous drips, and all that? You can't use natural rubber 'cause lots of people are allergic to latex. They'd have to go back to glass syringes, only you wouldn't be able to boil them to sterilise them any more, like they used to (they stopped that because, among other reasons, they seem to be a source of contagion for hepatitis), so they'd have to be single use, the cost would be exorbitant, I'd say.

If they could eliminate plastic, though, it'd be great.

Andy From Sligo

here's a great documentary from SkyNews (got some great high def pictures of China and Hong Kong as well) explaining (@12:38) why china stopped taking recycling from last July citing that the UK (and maybe Ireland) sent over contaminated rubbish along with the recycling and how they was not going to put up this mickey taking no longer and chose to refuse acceptance of all recycling:

Del.Monte

Given that the Chinese produce such vast quantities of plastic goods and packaging that they then sell to the West their attitude is a bit rich. There's one way to reduce plastic waste - stop buying pound shop rubbish!

Seth Brundle

Del.Monte wrote: »

Given that the Chinese produce such vast quantities of plastic goods and packaging that they then sell to the West their attitude is a bit rich.

It would be rich to refuse it for no reason but they are refusing it because it was contaminated. Surely, the onus is on the supplier (Irl or UK) to provide the Chinese with recyclable materials not contaminated with food or dirty nappies!

New Home

And yet, like it was mentioned before, there are countries/areas that manage to recycle up to 85% of the waste they collect, including nappies. This doesn't negate the fact that people can be lazy and careless.

my3cents

kbannon wrote: »

It would be rich to refuse it for no reason but they are refusing it because it was contaminated. Surely, the onus is on the supplier (Irl or UK) to provide the Chinese with recyclable materials not contaminated with food or dirty nappies!

Has anyone ever seen the state of the "recyclable" materials that turn up in the recyclable section of their local recycling center?

There's hardly any difference at our local center between the black bin rubbish and the recyclable rubbish.

The most obvious form of contamination is food, hardly anything is washed out but thats not the end of it because its hard sometimes even to spot anything recyclable in the recycling.

Whenever I take my recycling in I end up wondering why do I bother?

The council recycling center I use has someone on duty but they never check what people are dumping.

Seth Brundle

Out of curiosity, now that the Chinese aren't taking our recyclables, who is?

Incidentally, Scientists accidentally engineer a plastic-eating enzyme

Andy From Sligo

kbannon wrote: »

Out of curiosity, now that the Chinese aren't taking our recyclables, who is?

Incidentally, Scientists accidentally engineer a plastic-eating enzyme

yes heard that on sky news this morning - sounds like a great discovery

Del.Monte

kbannon wrote: »

It would be rich to refuse it for no reason but they are refusing it because it was contaminated. Surely, the onus is on the supplier (Irl or UK) to provide the Chinese with recyclable materials not contaminated with food or dirty nappies!

It? I thought the Chinese were refusing all countries plastic recycling not just Ireland.

Seth Brundle

Del.Monte wrote: »

It? I thought the Chinese were refusing all countries plastic recycling not just Ireland.

Maybe they are, I don't know. I do know that Irl & UK are facing a Chinese ban so I mentioned them. Either way, it doesn't matter - it was the same cause if it was a global rejection.

Andy From Sligo

it does make you wonder who is taking it now - mind you , we shouldnt really expect other countries to take our rubbish though - each country should sort out its own disposal or rubbish landfill and recycling thats' what I think

Tony EH

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

it does make you wonder who is taking it now - mind you , we shouldnt really expect other countries to take our rubbish though - each country should sort out its own disposal or rubbish landfill and recycling thats' what I think

As long as waste management is treated as a "business", there will always be people looking to cut corners and maximise profits.

It should be a state run thing, with each state being responsible for its own crap.

Andy From Sligo

yes, they refuse companies were being paid by the homeowner to take away away the recycling .... and then then they were being paid again by China per tonne of waste ..

Capt'n Midnight

PoulM wrote: »

We could go back to living without plastic. It worked 100 years ago. Not sure consumers will accept, but they will have to get used to living without, when oil runs out. Looking forward to that

Oil won't run out any time soon.

Oil for fuel may become more expensive as it takes more energy to recover and carbon taxes. This is why many "exhausted" oil fields still have only a fraction of the oil taken out, most of the stuff is still down there.


But oil as a feed stock for the chemical industry is worth spending more to extract. And you can use other carbon sources too, like coal tar or oil sands.

The problem is not so much the plastic but the air and marketing. Packaging is much bigger and brighter than it needs to be, to make the tat look more attractive and better value.

Thanks to containerisation packing doesn't even need to be as strong as the old days. Anyone remember tea chests ?

my3cents

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

....

Thanks to containerisation packing doesn't even need to be as strong as the old days. Anyone remember tea chests ?

Bring back the tea chest I say!

Andy From Sligo

my3cents wrote: »

Bring back the tea chest I say!

made of plywood weren't they? with metal edges