A winter of discontent.

[joe-90]

It appears that public service unions everywhere are going to strike over the cuts. Will the bins be left overflowing and the schools shut?

 

[Inky Pete]

A light dusting of snow and all that'll happen anyway. We'll never notice that they're on strike!

 

[thatbloke]

They may as well be on strike , emptying our bins once fortnightly is pretty crap.
I know we are running out of landfill sites but why not target the people who package our goods? Oh no , that would be way too difficult.

 

[wotan]

An idea would be build more incinerator sites, combined heat and power,

I imagine 80% of the refuse is combustible.

Wotan

 

[joe-90]

Not carbon neutral though.

 

[thatbloke]

Or we could simply produce less waste. For instance plastic bags from the Co Op can be composted , the green ones.
We could build more industrial composting sites, rethink how we package goods and make it easier to re-cycle.

 

[Deluks]

It should be compulsory for supermarkets to charge for carrier bags.
Say 10-20p per bag.
NO money from this scheme should go to government, the supermarkets should be allowed to keep it and use the income to subsidise the rising cost of, bread, milk, eggs, Stella etc. and other essentials, thus bringing shopping costs down for most, while the rich/stupid/forgetful can keep buying the bags.

 

[thatbloke]

Didnt they re-cycle them for a while? Dont know whny they stopped.

Somkeone is doing a bag for life, you get a heavy duty bag for 30p or something , then if it rips they will replace it for free, not ideal but better than use once and throw away.

 

[joe-90]

Apparently we dump about 20 million per day.

 

[joinerjohn]

The public service unions are only up in arms about proposed changes to their pension rights. Some council workers retire on very good pensions (far better than their private pension counterparts. It's all of us that are paying for these nice pensions. Government should be looking in on itself first though to reduce the pensions paid to MP's, which are even more generous than public service pensions. The government should be leading by example.

 

[Corgigrouch]

I don't think that we have council refuse collectors any more in my neck of the woods... I think that they are private companies and they seem to do the job very well indeed

 

[wotan]

Not carbon neutral though.

Sorry yes, I overlooked that aspect, we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot to meet ridiculous targets, ignore the electricity it would generate

Wotan

 

[Corgigrouch]

Not carbon neutral though.

Surly rotting waste produces methane which is a greenhouse gas so rotting or burning would produce the same effect

 

[Space cat]

Surly rotting waste produces methane which is a greenhouse gas so rotting or burning would produce the same effect

When organic waste rots in the absence of oxygen you get methane, which is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2. Ideally you would collect the methane to use as fuel but, failing this, just burn the rubbish.

A lot of domestic waste is packaging which came from trees which absorbed the carbon from the atmosphere in the first place. Plastic is made from oil but it's better to burn spent oil than new oil.

 

[Whitespirit66]

Is recycling the new religion? My neighbour spends 25 minutes each Thursday evening kneeling in front of her bin, sorting rubbish items into their own differently coloured recycling boxes.