Charlbury Area Waste Action Group

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3. RECYCLE

Last updated 1 June 2010

"Recycle" is the third part of the slogan Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. Priority should always be given to Reduce and Reuse because these dramatically reduce the consumption of both energy and resources in the "Story of Stuff". Recycling reduces the use of resources but the recycling process including transport is very energy intensive. However, there are two sides to recycling and the vital thing is that people need to BUY products that contain recycled material - it is this that saves trees, resources and energy. Plastic bottles are melted and spun into yarn - 18 recycled bottles go into making the Osprey Circuit 32 rucksack. Fleeces can be made from recycled polyester. Make sure that all the paper products you buy are made from recycled fibres.

In May 2008, CAWAG produced a Quick Guide for Charlbury listing all the things that can be put in the black recycling boxes. This also listed what can't be put in the boxes and suggestions about what to do with them instead. Some things like wet paper, tissue paper, shredded paper can be composted at home, but some things like expanded polystyrene can't be recycled at all in this area and must be put in the wheelie bin.

WODC are making important changes to the waste collection service during the autumn of 2010 and householders will be told about the changes during the summer. WODC will have a stall at Charlbury Street Fair in September to explain the arrangements. The important changes are a new free weekly collection of cooked and uncooked food waste, a new fortnightly free collection of garden waste which will alternate with the fortnightly collection of landfill. The weekly black box collection will remain for cans, paper, cardboard, aluminium, plastics, glass but with the important addition of Tetra Paks.

Kerbside Black Box Collection
Waste Recycling Centres
Green Waste Collection
Commercial Waste
Tetra Pak Collection
Battery Collection
Home Composting
Centralised Composting
Electrical Items
Remake Things
Bottled Water and Water Filters
Plastic
Degradeable Plastic
Compostable Biodegradable 'Plastic'

Kerbside Black Box Collection

Every household will have lots of recyclable household waste which needs to be put out for collection each week in the black boxes. Generally items don't have to be segregated into different types, it can all be mixed up together, but they should be clean and not contaminated with food. Nevertheless, it is important to keep similar small items together, e.g. put metal bottle tops into tin cans before squashing them, put plastic bottle tops and ties into plastic containers, put small bits of cardboard into bigger cardboard boxes. Otherwise, small items will fall out through the separation process and will end up being landfilled. It is also important to squash items so they take up the minimum space, this has a serious effect on the number of lorry journeys required and therefore a big impact on fuel consumption and climate change.

Tetra Paks (see below) must not be put in the black box because they are a composite material, however, they can be taken to the monthly CAWAG collection at the Spendlove carpark on the first Saturday of every month. Please wash them out first and flatten them, there is no need to remove the plastic top. CAWAG then take them in bulk to the recycling centre at Dean. From October 2010, WODC will take Tetra Paks in the weekly black box collection.

Batteries (see below) are tricky because they are small and should really be bagged up and marked clearly so they can be kept separately in the kerbside collection vehicles. If they are loose in the black boxes they can end up jamming the conveyor belts in the separation process and causing severe problems. Batteries are therefore best taken to the collection box at the Co-Op supermarket - since February 2010, large battery retailers are responsible for collecting batteries so CAWAG have been able to stop collecting them. Many thanks to everyone who used our CAWAG battery boxes at the Post Office, the Corner House and the School - since November 2007, we disposed of about 10,000 batteries for recycling.

From 2009, Yellow Pages telephone directories CAN be put into your black boxes for recycling. Previously there we used to be an annual Yellow Pages recycling bin located in the Spendlove carpark during August and September when the new directories were distributed.

During January, take your Christmas cards (and cards you've saved during the rest of the year) to WH Smith, M&S, and Tesco stores who collect cards for the Woodland Trust who recycle them to generate money to plant new woodlands in the UK. In 2008 they collected over 73 million cards bringing the 12 year total to 600 million cards - enabling them to plant over 141,000 trees across the UK.

Contact WODC if your household needs one or two more black recycling boxes. At Christmas, WODC provide an extra clear plastic sack for any one particular type of recyclable material - paper/card, plastic bottles, or tins.

WRAP's Recycle Now consumer website has lots of good ideas about recycling. 

Waste Recycling Centres

WODC have cardboard, plastic, glass, cans, and paper recycling bins at the Spendlove carpark. There is also an OCC waste & recycling centre nearby at Dean Pit between Spelsbury and Chadlington. Books, CDs, DVDs, videos, PC/video games can all be taken to the book recycling bins at Back Lane carpark in Eynsham, New Street carpark in Chipping Norton and Sainsbury's at Witney.

However, we are a long way off from the zero waste situation in Kamikatsu, Japan where there are no rubbish collections and where everyone has to separate out their waste into 34 different containers at the waste recycling centre.

Green Waste Collection

The first Saturday of EVERY month there is a FREE green waste collection from the Spendlove car park, bring your garden waste along between 10a.m. until 12 noon - this has been arranged by CAWAG with WODC. In addition to this, Christmas Trees are shredded in the Spendlove car park the first weekend after Twelfth Night every January.

In February 2009, WODC made more opportunities for people to sign up to their fortnightly green waste collection, the cost will be £51 for collections over the 17 month period from 11 May 2009 until 24 September 2010. However, WODC have now stopped their FREE collection of 4-12 sacks of garden waste which each householder used to be entitled to 4 times a year. This green waste is taken to Showell Farm near Chipping Norton where Agrivert compost it - each year they convert 15,000 tonnes of green waste to 5,000 tonnes of compost.

From October 2010, WODC will provide a free fortnightly garden waste collection service.

Commercial Waste

Advice about commercial waste can be found on Oxfordshire County Council's website.

Tetra Pak Collection

At the same times as the green waste collection each month, CAWAG provide a large collection bag for Tetra Pak drink cartons alongside the recycling bins at the Spendlove - CAWAG then takes them to the Dean Recycling Centre for disposal. Rinse the Tetra Paks out and flatten them by pulling out the ears so that they can be compacted as much as possible, there is NO need to remove the plastic caps. Collections started in January 2008 and over 5,000 have been collected by March 2009. In addition to the County Council waste and recycling centres, there are also Tetra Pak recycling bins at Sainsbury's in Witney and Kidlington and also Back Lane car park in Eynsham. From October 2010, WODC will take Tetra Paks in the weekly black box collection.

Battery Collection

Since February 2010, large battery retailers are now responsible for collecting batteries so CAWAG have been able to stop collecting them. In Charlbury the Co-Op supermarket has a collection box so please take your dead batteries there.  Many thanks to everyone who used our CAWAG battery boxes at the Post Office, the Corner House and the School - since November 2007, we disposed of about 10,000 batteries for recycling.

Home Composting

Home composting - the next time you are cramming down potato peelings on top of carrot tops and cabbage leaves into a plastic bin liner full of other bits of rubbish - think of composting it instead. Composting as much as possible at home has a big environmental benefit: fewer lorry trips have to be made to collect household waste, less material ends up in landfill, less methane is produced by the landfill (as a greenhouse gas, methane is 23 times as bad as carbon dioxide), the soil in your garden will also be improved by using the compost and less peat and fewer fertilisers will be required. Composting is the processing of biologically degradable organic wastes, such as garden and kitchen wastes, to produce a reasonably stable material that contains valuable plant nutrients. Cardboard and paper can also be composted, in fact it is very beneficial to have a high proportion of "brown" material in a composter as well as "green" materials - BUT only compost dirty or wet cardboard and paper that cannot be put in for recycling (it is much better to recycle paper and card as many times as possible before eventually being composted).

Low cost composters are available to turn your kitchen waste into valuable nutrients to add to your garden soil. Prices came down on 1 October 2009 - phone 0845 130 60 90 to place an order. If you have any questions about composting you can submit them to composting experts. Information about wormeries and top tips can be found on the Envocare website. If you have a wormery you will have a liquid to dispose of regularly so that the worms don't drown - this is a strong plant fertiliser - so dilute it first 10:1 and then use it to water house or garden plants.

Read first hand experiences on this web site about home composting using a wormery, a bokashi, and a green johanna. WRAP's RecycleNow home composting website has a short cartoon film about how compost is made - suitable for children and adults. You can also make your own wormery very easily and cheaply - children are often fascinated by the worms and enjoy getting involved with the process. The following books about composting are suitable for children: Grow Organic, Eat Organic by Lone Morton; All about Compost by Pauline Pears; Worms by George Pilkington; Composting by Nicky Scott; Reduce Reuse Recycle by Nicky Scott (with illustrations by Axel Schefler, of Gruffalo fame!).

If you live in Charlbury and want advice about composting contact your local Master Composter.

Centralised Composting

In February 2007, Oxfordshire County Council unveiled its plan to compost kitchen waste centrally in Oxfordshire and to go out to tender to find a company to run the In-Vessel composting operation. Agrivert already operate this sort of facility at Edmonton near London and they will be submitting an outline planning application for the Worton Farms site at Cassington which is currently used for green waste composting. From the autumn of 2010, WODC will be making a new free weekly collection of cooked and uncooked food waste.

Electrical Items

From July 2007, the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Regulations were introduced to ensure that WEEE items are disposed of separately to your other waste. The manufacturers, producers and retailers of the equipment will pay for its disposal and the County Council are collecting items on their behalf at the Waste Recycling Centres such as Dean. WEEE items are taken for refurbishment wherever possible and anything that cannot be reused is taken to specialist centres for stripping down into component parts - these materials are then sent to be turned into the raw materials used for making new items. Some companies offer an in-store take back of electrical items on a like for like basis - if you purchase a new electrical item, these stores will dispose of your old item for you. The photo shows the giant WEEE man at the Eden Project created by Paul Bonomini from small electrical items.

Remake Things

Contact Jumblebaggers,  a local Oxfordshire venture, they create bags, buntings, and lots of other imaginative artistic things out of unwanted textiles.

Send off your old jeans to Softwalker Ltd - a new Cumbrian company that bought up the canvas shoe-making equipment belonging to Clarks Shoes when they transferred their manufacturing overseas. The new company hired some of the workers from the original factory and set up a business creating sandals from old jeans.

Visit Vinspired aimed at promoting recycled fashion among young people. Download a Fashion Favours fashion kit showing how to customise clothes and upload photos of your creations to their website. Visit JunkyStyling for timeless, deconstructed, recut and completely transformed clothing.

Visit Orinoco, Oxfordshire's Scrap Store located at Headington. Orinoco collects a huge variety of scrap materials that can be used to remake into other things. Visit Orinoco at Bullingdon Community Centre,  Peat Moors (off the Slade), Headington, they are open to the public on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 11am to 4pm.

Charlbury Primary School had a competition in June 2008 to create things from rubbish, this prizewinning dress is cleverly made from crisp bags stitched onto a cotton cloth.

Bottled Water and Water Filters

Consumption of bottled water is doubling every  five years in Britain - we drink 200 times as much bottled water today as we did in the 1970s. Even if the bottles are recycled, the resources and transport involved with bottled water are incredible - it takes up to 12 litres of water to make one litre of bottled water and hundreds of times more CO₂ than tap water. This is particularly unecessary considering our tap water is safe to drink, however, a water filter does make it more palatable.  Ask for tap water in restaurants rather than bottled water - often the tap water will be filtered and served with ice and lemon. BRITA, the major supplier of cartridge water filters, has launched an in-store recycling scheme. Recycling bins are now situated in a range of high street stores such as Robert Dyas, Argos, Cargo, Comet, Sainsbury's, Homebase, Asda, and Makro. The collection bin at Cargo in Witney is located next to the new filters. BRITA have now discontinued their long-running freepost service where you used to be able to return 6 at a time for recycling. Since March 2009, The Good Food Shop in Charlbury has started collecting Brita filters for recycling, so this is very convenient for Charlbury people.

Plastic

Plastics are very lightweight and while they are only a small percentage of household waste by weight they are a very high percentage by volume. Polystyrene, being PS6, is recyclable when it is in the form of thin plastic e.g. vending cups, but not when it is expanded because of the volume problem (click this link, it is worth it to see the photo!) and it usually ends up being landfilled. Plastic bottles need compacting to make it more viable for recycling - take the plastic tops off bottles so that they can be squashed in the collection process. Be sure to put the plastic tops into another plastic container so they don't fall through the holes during the waste separation process and end up being landfilled. The increase in degradable and biodegradable plastics (see below) make the recycling and sorting processes even more complicated than before and also cause confusion with the public - they may even lead to an increase in plastics waste and litter if people believe that discarded plastics will simply disappear! The reality is that plastic bags are the scourge on the earth, they cause untold death and injury to wildlife around the world. There is a vortex of plastic which has built up in the Pacific Ocean and a third of the albatross chicks die on the island of Midway because their parents mistakenly feed them plastic.

Degradable Plastic

The Co-Op introduced degradable plastic carrier bags in 2002, degradable bags for their sliced bread range in 2004, and degradable plastic bags for their entire pre-packed produce range in 2005. The bags are produced from a modified polyethylene film with a special additive to allow total degradation of the plastic material, leaving only water, a minimal amount of carbon dioxide and a small amount of minerals compatible with soil. The Co-Op state that the technology has been independently tested and proven to be environmentally safe, leaving no toxic substances at the end of the degradation process, also that the material has been tested as safe for direct food contact under EU standards. The writing on the carrier bags remind people that they can be reused (within the timescales limited by the additive). This plastic can also be recycled in the normal plastic waste stream (as polythene film). Freezing food items in their plastic packaging is also OK. However, read this June 2009 Guardian article summarising the problems with degradable plastic - while it might sound environmentally friendly, it seems daft to waste oil resources and energy on something that self-destructs, they won't degrade in landfills where there is no light or oxygen, and they also may leave toxic leftovers.

Compostable Biodegradable 'Plastic'

Sainsbury's have decided to phase out plastics from its ready meal range and will save up to 4,000 tonnes of plastic production every year and reduce household waste. The plan involves the replacement of plastic packaging from its 150 million ready meals to what is described as 'compostable packaging'.

Compostable packaging, thought to be the greenest of its kind, is made with maize, sugar-cane or starch and can break down in garden compost heaps. Sainsbury's began using composting packaging on a small scale in 2002, but the new initiative will encompass more than 500 product items. However, this biodegradeable 'plastic' must be composted rather than put in with plastic recycling otherwise it will contaminate the plastic! Beware though - some hard biodegradeable plastics do not break down in garden compost heaps because they don't reach a high enough temperature, either hang on to these until the County Council compost scheme starts up in October 2010 or put them into landfill - they will contaminate the plastic if you put them in with plastics. However, biodegradeable plastic is not totally a good idea for two reasons. The first is that growing crops to make plastic or fuel rather than food is a major reason for the worldwide food crisis. The second reason is that this type of plastic breaks down in anaerobic (without oxygen) landfill sites to create methane which is 23 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - attempts are made to collect methane from landfill sites but lots will escape. Also, a photodegradable plastic product will not degrade if it is buried in a landfill site where there is no light.

The soft biodegradable plastics from Sainsbury's and Waitrose do eventually compost in aerobic (with oxygen) garden compost heaps, they feel softer than normal plastic and are easy to tear, the Sainsbury's material is clearly marked as compostable but the Waitrose material is only described as biodegradable on the back of the label in very small writing - look out for this plastic which has a soft feel to it on Waitrose's pre-packaged organic fruit and vegetables.

Watch out for Marks & Spencer changing its packaging in its drive to become carbon neutral by 2012 - however, read Mrs Green's dialogue with M&S about their compostable packaging. January 2007 also saw Tescos  committing to reduce their impact on climate change.