Plastic campaign

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zaffy
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Plastic campaign

Post by zaffy »

When the topic of plastic packaging is raised, it mostly refers to food. Some packing on certain food stuffs is beneficial, stops it getting bruised or wilting etc. I want to raise awareness on unnecessary DIY packaging. I bought three reels of the better quality masking tape coloured green. (not sure if I can mention the name) They came in thick plastic containers. Masking tape does not bruise or wilt. Should we start a campaign to encourage DIY stores to get on board with recycling and plastic reduction?
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by Gadget »

So true, some of those 'blister packs' that stuff comes in require an engineering degree to open them.
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by kellys_eye »

I couldn't give a rat's 'arris for the anti-plastic brigade. It's not an issue. 99% of people dispose of the stuff properly and we are all into recycling at home (whether we want to or not).

Plastic is INVALUABLE in all our lives - look around and see what it does and imagine what would happen if you didn't have it. Wooden TV cases again? Or should we cut down millions of acres of forest to make paper bags? Plastic is (as good as) a by-product of oil production and is being used responsibly by practically everyone.

The 'problem' is the third world sh1t holes that have zero regard for the environment yet, as usual, the eco-fascists come out and hound law-abiding, tax-paying innocents to extract yet more 'funds' from us to tackle a problem that isn't ours and would be un-noticeable if it was discussed in percentage terms i.e. 0.00001% of fish/birds etc get caught up in it.

It's all virtue-signalling. Nothing we pay in additional taxes will make a blind bit of difference where it counts - overseas. And I, for one, am sick to the back teeth of funding foreign regimes because some ponced up eco-terrorist wails and throws their dummy out of the pram and blames 'me' for the issue.

Screw 'em.
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by Rorschach »

I fall somewhere in the middle. Plastic is amazing stuff, we definitely need it and there is no substitute in 99% of cases. I do however think that there are plenty of places where we could substitute other items, especially in single/low use disposable items.

The straws campaign is stupid in that it thinks it will save the world, but the basic premise works, paper straws works perfectly. Aluminium foil works great as a takeaway container as does paper in many cases. Wooden forks, spoons are just as good if not better than plastic cutlery. Paper and wood are a pretty much carbon neutral, totally renewable resource, and it quite literally grows on trees!

Oh and I don't want to hear any ball-cocks about deforestation to make paper, if you still believe those myths there is no helping you. :lol:
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zaffy
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by zaffy »

Dear Kellys_Eye,
I never said plastic was a bad thing, in fact I praised it in its ability to preserve food. Before plastic, tortoise shell was used. I have a sixty-year-old tortoise and the thought of him being made into a hairbrush is the stuff of nightmares. Ivory was used too, and so much so, that the past realised they would one day run out of elephants and a campaign was raised to invent a substitute. Excessive plastic and non-recycling is the issue. As far as the population abroad, the poorer countries, they use very little. They have nothing and if they found a plastic tray they'd sure make use of it. Have you seen Brazilian children picking over rubbish dumps for the slightest thing? It is the modern Western world that demands high usage. And if the sweat shops in poor countries make it, it is because the West demands it. Thank you for adding another dimension to the discussion.
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by kellys_eye »

Zaffy - yes, I appreciate the concerns you raised in the OP - it's typical of me to take issue with the root cause though and I think the majority opinion is along the lines I propose i.e. most people actually appreciate the usefulness of the stuff. The main thrust of my point was to illustrate how the 'minimalist' impact of some issues gets taken out of context and exaggerated by those 'with a purpose' to suit their own ends.

I also agree that the issue of 'wood from trees' isn't a problem - indeed, I LIVE in a forest and use it all the time (fire wood) so know that it needs to be 'grown to be used'!

But I don't follow the 'kids picking over rubbish dumps' issue - I used to do this myself as a kid (although not for the same reasons!) - but we can't lift every kid in the world out of poverty lest we place ourselves in it as a result. This is social progress that the UK went through a century (and more) ago and one that developing countries will HAVE TO on their own road to prosperity. I might go so far as to claim that had some of those countries eschewed 'colonialism' they'd be in a far better place now than they currently are. They made their own bed - let them sort it.

Rorschach - we use aluminium trays in our shop (curries) and were tempted by some eco container replacements that are made from some sugar cane substance. Cost us a fair amount to get a few 100 in stock but despite the claims that they are 'food safe' they seep liquids! I'm just glad aluminium is recyclable anyway so we don't fall foul of any eco complaints against the way we work. Sometimes the 'normal' products are perfectly good enough - like plastic straws...... (Mrs k_e complains they go soggy before they're finished being used).
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by OchAye »

zaffy wrote:I want to raise awareness on unnecessary DIY packaging. I bought three reels of the better quality masking tape coloured green. (not sure if I can mention the name) They came in thick plastic containers. Masking tape does not bruise or wilt. Should we start a campaign to encourage DIY stores to get on board with recycling and plastic reduction?
There are other tapes that will not come packaged in anything ... BUT as a matter of principle. I am hairy :mrgreen: , I have two even more hairy cats, and often visit some larger than me hairy friends (4 long legs too). You would not want a reel of sticky tape that has its sides covered in fluff and I am only saying that from experience. Masking tape does "bruise", if you drop a reel at an angle you will find it does not give you as good a straight line where it has been indented but what you got is probably more to do with marketing than practicalities.

You can mention the product ... is it frog or something like that?
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Job and Knock
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by Job and Knock »

zaffy wrote:Masking tape does not bruise or wilt. Should we start a campaign to encourage DIY stores to get on board with recycling and plastic reduction?
Point taken - however as Oche Aye says it does sort of bruise; drop a roll right on the corner a few times and see how well it unrolls without tearing.... I agree though that the amount of packaging used on it and other products is completely OTT.
kellys_eye wrote:I couldn't give a rat's 'arris for the anti-plastic brigade. It's not an issue. 99% of people dispose of the stuff properly and we are all into recycling at home (whether we want to or not).
Do they, though? The construction industry certainly doesn't! And what happens to your waste once it's been collected? I know that round here there are major concerns about what the council is doing with recycling it collects
kellys_eye wrote:Or should we cut down millions of acres of forest to make paper bags? Plastic is (as good as) a by-product of oil production and is being used responsibly by practically everyone.
Well, at least wood is a renewable resource - you could argue that given enough time oil is. It just takes a lot longer to make it. And as for oil being used sensibly, is there really any justification for 5-litre V-8 4x4s in the UK. Just asking

I think like Rorschach I fall somewhere in the middle - we do tend to over-package stuff, we don't recycle sensibly (shoving plastics into a container and shipping it off to be a problem somewhere else isn't sensible recycling in my book) and we don't seem to be aware of the problems that we have already caused ourselves, e.g. plasticisers getting into the ecology which mimic estrogen causing sex change in fish and low sperm count in humans, and that's before we get onto the damage caused to wildlife by plastics being ground into micropellets in the oceans then ingested by marine wild-life (some of which happen to be part of our food chain). A prime example of what plastics can do
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by Bob225 »

That green amphibian Tape needs its case as the adhesive is a gel base that's what gives its sealing ability, once the tape has been used I reuse mine for 3m blue

If you want to target someone try amazon with there packing - a recent package I received was 250x250x750mm and it was 95% stuffed with paper

from a YouTube channel I sub to



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Job and Knock
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by Job and Knock »

The aren't alone. Whenever I've been into project meetings where the big-whigs want us to come up with ideas to help us meet our requirements I invariably ask why we can't segregate cardboard and recycleable plastic waste and get it dealt with appropriately. Despite the fact that on some jobs we have the space for a couple of extra skips and we're filling at least one 10 cubic metre skip every day the idea is always shouted down...... On a big job you ought to see the amount of polythene and cardboard that just goes to landfill (after it has been contaminated with old paint, concrete dust, etc it is all unacceptable for recycling) - it is a scandalous waste of resources
"The person who never made a mistake, never made anything" - Albert Einstein

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"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell from The Triumph of Stupidity", 1933
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by Grendel »

Perhaps other industries are the same , I can't really say , but ours , the building industry , does seem to be poor in respect to waste . I've been on large jobs where there are several skips for different materials as j&k describes. Equally I've been on many more smaller jobs where a single skip is filled with everything. Not trying to be too critical but some on sites don't seem to care either way , just chuck it and that's it . At one time I gained the nickname skippy because I was regularly taking things out of the skips primarily for reuse ( timber for instance) or resale ( metals etc) . One sort of job I didn't like was bank work as there's was very rarely the chance to do any recycling or recovery . It was all about speed. We'd go in and rip everything out , rip being the operative word , everything was smashed or prised off , very little was unscrewed or removed carefully and it all just went into the skip.
Back to the original post about plastic then yes I have to agree that there's Farr more than we actually need. Plastic isa very useful product , it's stable and long lived but always amazes me we use it for single use items . Recycling is really only a can kicking exercise too. There's a finite limit to how many times anything can be recycled , at some point it becomes too contaminated or degraded to be of use and has to be disposed of. Oil is also a finite resource , we need to be looking more at plastics from non oil sources , cellulose and corn starches for instance but either way we should be looking at reducing use of any materials unnecessarily .
On the subject of plastics one for KE ,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45043989
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by OchAye »

Circa 2000 at work (office environment), we got some cardboard boxes delivered + green bags to put inside them, to put our waste paper (and there was plenty of that). The stuff went to a small recycler within walking distance. I heard he complained about contaminated stuff, and eventually he refused to take any more of our waste paper.

No surprise there, multiple times I saw coffee cups and other shite being thrown in the bins even if the rubbish bin was two steps away. The recycler and his employees were sorting paper in white/colour and probably other papers like newspaper by hand. They did not want to put their hands in the stuff. On a similar note, AFAIK skips with mixed materials go to a couple of private sites where they get sorted by hand. On one site it is exclusively Eastern Europeans that do the sorting the other site I have not seen any humans there :-) Plenty of jobs for the locals sometime after Brexit.

The crunch is that the UK does not manufacture enough "things" to use all of the recyclable material we produce. Add price ups and downs for paper or plastics and all of a sudden it is uneconomic for a private business to put its money into recycling (metals is another story). So we had the export of rubbish to China, and more recently to Turkey via The Netherlands.

====================
BTW. I am trying to find what happens with glass recycling, any pointers? My local council stopped its monthly kerb collection although I single handedly tried to keep their recycling going :occasion5: . OK uneconomic to send out a massive lorry on a round only for it to come back empty, but I have a feeling there was no market for glass.
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by Someone-Else »

Regarding glass recycling about 3 weeks after we all received "glass recycling boxes" (Big open plastic storage box) they started to disappear one by one. No, I never took them, no idea who did.
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by kellys_eye »

OchAye wrote: BTW. I am trying to find what happens with glass recycling, any pointers?....... but I have a feeling there was no market for glass.
Quite right.

And it exposes the total and utter hypocrisy of Councils who, when the chips are down (non-plastic chips of course) know which side their bread is buttered and if one of their policies doesn't turn a profit they drop it regardless of its environmental credentials.
Grendel wrote:On the subject of plastics one for KE , {weblink to some BBC propaganda}
Yeah, I'll bite. No mention of precisely how much of those gases are being released - a very critical issue and, I suspect, one they're trying to avoid revealing as the quantities are barely measurable using susper-sensitive instrumentation.

If you want controversy, listen to this (or read the transcript)

https://redpilledamerica.com/blog/demo-home/episode-7/ (podcast)
https://redpilledamerica.com/blog/demo-home/episode-7/ (transcript)

Worries? I don't think so.
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Re: Plastic campaign

Post by Job and Knock »

OchAye wrote:BTW. I am trying to find what happens with glass recycling, any pointers? My local council stopped its monthly kerb collection although I single handedly tried to keep their recycling going :occasion5: . OK uneconomic to send out a massive lorry on a round only for it to come back empty, but I have a feeling there was no market for glass.
Well Pilkingtons in St. Helens certainly used to employ these people who are called "cullet merchants" who would collect and transport clear glass waste for recycling in glass manufacture - a percentage of new glass has always been recycled. Similarly United Glass used to take cullet as well for their products. The problem is that the glass needs to be segregated - you can't allow coloured bottles to get into a batch of clear glass destined for glazing - and many councils just mix it up. One council (Tameside in Greater Manchester) found an interesting solution to this - crush the glass sieve it. Some of the grades go for shot blasting, etch blasting, etc whilst other grades go for repair work on sports fields, golf courses. Apparently worms don't like the glass that much so you reduce the amount of worm casts by applying this stuff. The labels can be briquetted and burned for heat production
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