Ideas page

Contents

The history of rubbish
Composting waste
What happens to your recycling?

Useful links
www.recyclezone.org.uk
www.2recycle.co.uk
www.freecycle.co.uk
www.thinkcans.com
http://www.scrib.org

The history of rubbish

The UK produces over thirty million tonnes of rubbish each year, that's about half a tonne per person. When human beings first started living in organised communities there was hardly any rubbish of the type we know now. Everything was produced locally from natural resources and the waste found in archaeological sites tends to be bones and shells more than anything. Tools were often repaired again and again until they wore out completely

Times have changed. we now tend to buy everything in some sort of packaging, sometimes much more packaging than is needed, and we often find it is easier and cheaper to replace things rather than repair them. All of this builds up to fill our bins and something needs to be done with it all.

Over time the waste management industry has grown, it needs to do different things as the lifesyles we lead have changed and the law has been modified to cope with the changes in rubbish composition that have occurred since the industrial revolution, as more and more people live in urban areas.

To view the development of rubbish collections in the uk through the last century, follow this link (external website)

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Composting waste
This method of waste reduction is getting more and more popular. Why?

Garden plants love it. It gives them a varied, nutritious diet to help them thrive.
Compost improves all soils: it binds together sandy soils so that they hold water better and it breaks up clay soils to improve their structure.
It reduces the amount of rubbish in your bin and stops it from smelling
Because soil is a basic food source for plants, the healthier the soil, the healthier the plant – if it’s a food plant, even better!
By producing your own compost, you won’t need to use a peat based compost (saving peat which is a non-renewable resource)
Noxious fluids and dangerous gasses are produced by organic material in landfill

Find out more about composting

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What happens to your recycling bins?
At home, we pile all our recyclable materials into the light green bins, put them out in the street once a fortnight and somehow they disapear into back of a lorry never to be seen again. Out of sight, out of mind, eh?

But what happens next? Putting things in a bin isn't recycling, it's only the first step.

The lorries transport the materials to a materials recovery facility (MRF) in Colnbrook where they are sorted both mechanically and manually into separate bales. From there the materials are reprocessed in the UK and in Europe and are returned to consumers as recycled products.

We sent a reporter to the MRF to discover what happens there. Read more

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