Can you have yourselves a very sustainable Christmas?

Sounds like another roast turkey dinner John.
🍗 ☺️

Well, we had sirloin steak this year with a selection of country vegetables excluding parsnips, although we did have some sprouts which she cooks properly so they are both soft and tasty. Some I had recently in a rather exclusive eating establishment were distinctly al dente. This was followed by luxury ice cream and jelly! No waste whatsoever.

We had rib-eye steaks with jacket spuds and coleslaw. A table-top grill comes in handy.

And what a day for the thermostat to pack in… Well, these things happen. Nice veggie lunch, though.

This year I bought my other half Thornton’s – quite a lot of the ones she especially enjoys.

A Black Magic box of chocs found its way into our house and I am pleased to report the selection is back on form and very more-ish; a couple are a bit gooey but they appeal to some. The soft centres have been changed here and there but are still delicious and the dark chocolate couverture is outstanding.

I am sorry your dinner was ruined Ian. I agree with you there is much more to testing than checking that all the functions perform. Instruction manuals are an appalling let-down in my experience and should be subjected to special examination to make sure they are both comprehensive and intelligible to any UK user.

That sounds helpful, Sophie. I’ll check it out 🙂

Not sure about that; it may depend on your local recycling authority. Must admit I’m a composting fiend, almost everything goes into my Hotbin, including ripped-up cardboard, egg cartons and food waste. As it’s pretty well sealed there’s no chance of foxes getting in, and it all gets churned up once in a while with a giant corkscrew (this is not fantasy!).

Our Rotary club does for one, also my wife’s church group.

I have heard this story and wondered whether it was the unmetallic truth. Thinking about the journey our recycling takes suggests there are several opportunities for any non-conforming material to be rejected before it reaches a container destined for a paper mill, and further chances beyond that stage.

Our recycling bin contains a mangled mix of metals, glass, cardboard, paper and plastics and this has to be separated into the different materials. I appreciate that this is largely a mechanical process with magnetic and vacuum action to divert various streams into the different channels for onward processing. As I understand it there is also a degree of manual oversight involved so that obvious contaminants are pulled out and I would have thought that wrapping paper and other metallised paper [like biscuit wrappers, crisp packets, etc] would get dealt with at that stage. If not, they carry on through the works with other types of paper to a crushing and baling plant that produces cubes of material for transit to a paper mill. I defy anyone to be able to tell whether within each bale there might be a glitter-dusted Christmas card or a crumpled sheet of shiny gift-wrap.

The bales will also contain wire staples in magazines, sticky-tape on cardboard boxes, adhesive on envelopes, bits of string, and lots of other odds and ends that have survived the initial segregation. There will also be laminated covers and stitched bindings on expensive magazines, foil and adhesive labels from packaging, rubber bands and those annoying tag-ties attached to garment labels. At the paper mill this stuff all goes through screening, washing, shredding, and pulping processes before proceeding to the manufacture of various grades of paper. Given these circumstances, the notion that some Christmas wrapping will require the rejection of a whole load from the recycling plant is clearly unsustainable. It is a big white lie put out by the recycling industry and local councils to encourage us all to separate our waste paper so that as little as possible of the difficult stuff ends up in the paper stream. Yes, it’s a problem for the paper and board manufacturers who obviously want maximum purity but in my view they just need to sort it.

In fact, Which? could apply pressure to manufacturers to return to simpler wrapping materials. AIUI one issue is where plastic and paper are combined during manufacture.

I had similar thoughts when I read that story. Sounded more like someone wanted to go home early than be bothered to deal with the problem.

I would love to know how much landfill waste is created by putting everything into one recycling bin?

There are documentaries on everything under the sun, but I have never seen one on rubbish and recycling and I would like to see what happens to our carefully selected recycling after it gets unceremoniously dumped in the back of a cart.

Alfa – I think the first stage is tipping all the recycling waste out onto a moving belt with people standing on both sides physically picking out stuff that is obviously not suitable. After that the 90%+ recyclable mix of cardboard, paper, plastic, glass and metals goes through some fairly sophisticated machinery that does a pretty good job of segregating the different materials [for example magnets are used to separate tin and steel from aluminium, copper and brass, and different densities of plastic can be separated by a jet of air]. Further refinement is probably a manual process again. My guess would be that very little landfill waste emerges from the recycling stream. Our authority asks us to leave the screwcaps on bottles and jars to prevent breakage or deformation “as they get removed during the recycling process” but I am intrigued to know whether somebody sits on a one-legged stool all day uncapping containers and discarding metal caps to a bin on the left and plastic ones to a bin on the right. I am still trying to work out how to dispose of a champagne bottle whose cork will not re-enter the neck and whether or not to soak off the paper label and put it in the bin separately.

Simple solution is to label the bins – more sustainable than changing them.

If people are accustomed to putting bottles into a blue bin, it might not register that they are expected to do something different when staying with friends. There is no need to change existing bins. A prominent coloured label or plastic tie on the handle would be all that is needed to introduce a standard colour code.

I think most people would be capable of reading a prominent label. However, not the world’s biggest problem.

I know this is a seasonal Convo, but waste extends to every day, not just Christmas. We waste forests on book and newspapers – many not read. We use gas-guzzling cars when they aren’t necessary. We not only throw a lot of perfectly good food away, we also eat too much. We heat houses that for many are too big for our needs. We throw away products that, with more incentive, could be repaired. Most of, us, most of the time. If we really cared about waste we’d tackle the everyday waste, but most don’t, because we have a way of life that we are mostly comfortable with.

It will only change when it is forced upon us, by lack of resources.

Well, that’s that off my chest. Happy New Year 🙂

My goodness. I have seen bright red with a black lid, but not purple. After Christmas and other bank holidays, bins are often contribute more to the eyesore because of uncertainty about the collection day.

All that is needed is a coloured marker to identify bins and some coordination by the councils to agree what we should put in each one. When new bins are introduced they could be produced in a standard colour (maybe dark green) and have their coloured marker affixed when delivered.

Our area will have garden recycling bins (of which there can be up to 3 per household) lining the local roads for over 2 weeks.

We put them out as normal as their leaflet says they will be collected, but they are never collected over Christmas/New Year.

I tried to get a discount one year as they hadn’t bothered to turn up on 3 occasions throughout the year, but was turned down.

One of my post-Christmas activities is to do some cutting back in the garden, so envisage that my brown bin will be full prior to each collection before the grass cutting season starts. In some areas, these bins (which may be a different colour) are not collected during the winter months.

Unfortunately, the composition of glass differs and these need to be kept separate to prevent variations in the quality of recycled glass.

“Glass containers for food and beverages are 100% recyclable, but not with other types of glass. Other kinds of glass, like windows, ovenware, Pyrex, crystal, etc. are manufactured through a different process. If these materials are introduced into the glass container manufacturing process, they can cause production problems and defective containers.” http://www.gpi.org/recycling/glass-recycling-facts

The usual advice is not to put broken bottles and jars in recycling bins.

We tie up glass separately in a carrier bag, but as the whole bin is tipped into a large lorry, that glass is going to get broken. So unless recycling is sorted at the roadside, I’m not sure why advice would be against putting broken bottles and jars in recycling bins.

I have not seen an explanation. Maybe it is for the safety of those who have the unenviable task of emptying our bins. In a bag, broken glass could poke out and be a danger to children.