The Engineering EcoWarrior

Look at the recycling logo on a plastic bottle or container. It depicts a continuous loop, a virtuous circle, if you like, of plastic being made into bottles then being recycled into new bottles then the whole process repeating endlessly. Nothing falls out of the cycle and nothing new is introduced. It is a bit misleading. It doesn't take much imagination to realise that energy needs added to the process at the very least - energy for collecting the used plastic, treating it and manufacturing the new bottles. Less obvious is the fact that very few food grade bottles contain material from recycled bottles. Plant has been developed to do this but at this time its use not widespread.

There are moves afoot to begin uplifting food waste separately from other waste to allow energy to be extracted through the use of anaerobic digestion. On the face of it this sounds like a very good idea – not only does it extract energy but the residual waste can be used as a commercial grade compost, unlike the low grade compost extracted from Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) systems. This would see large reductions in material going to landfill. My concern is that large scale adoption of this technology will encourage more waste or, at best, stop any further reduction in the food we waste. Here is why.

Continuing with the theme of Recycling Week, here is a brief introduction to Mechanical Biological Treatment of domestic waste. What is Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT)? It is a method for sorting through domestic waste and separating it into materials that can be recycled such as glass, metals and plastics or organic materials that will decompose, such as food waste. What are the benefits of it?

Recycling week runs from today, the 18th of June until the 26th with the aim of promoting recycling at home and away. There are many events around the country promoted by the Recycle Now website run by WRAP (Waste & Resource Action Programme). The website also contains a lot of information on recycling. Recycling helps to conserve limited resources and using recycled materials often use less energy than virgin materials. In addition, recycling reduces the amount of waste that goes in to landfill, hence extending the life of existing sites and reducing the need for opening new sites at great environmental and social cost.  Recycling week is focusing on kerbside recycling (home) and recycling centres where you can take recyclable waste that is not collected kerbside(away).  Another aspect of "away" that does not appear to be addressed is the dearth of recycling options in public places.  In some countries, they standard pavement bin will have compartments for glass, m...

I recently read an article which discussed how we could tackle the problem of the 800,000 tonnes of plastic bags thrown away each year in Europe, an average of 191 for every citizen of the European Union.  It highlighted the much smaller carbon footprint of disposable single use plastic carrier bags compared with alternatives.  Part of the article described re-using plastic bags as bin liners rather than using purpose made bin liners and it had a nifty graphic .  To a point, this makes sense but considering that many people use plastic bags for almost all of their domestic purchases, then to use every carrier bag once as a bin liner would require all that was bought to be disposed of in the bin.  I know that there is a lot of waste packaging in groceries but it does generally compact down to a smaller volume than the original (unless you live entirely on tinned produce) therefore assuming that all plastic bags are re-used in this way is stretching thin...

I took my 6 year old daughter Christmas shopping the other week. We went to Lush , the hand made cosmetics company, looking for a gift for her mother. She was in heaven: the bright colours, the smells, the glitter and the pretty shapes of the soaps and bath bombs. There was no difficulty in choosing a gift for mother (especially one she might share), the only problem was deciding to stop!

Despite the austerity measures we currently face, the government has miraculously found £250 million to encourage local authorities to reinstate weekly refuse collections in England. There is, apparently, a huge public outcry about the change to fortnightly collections. Certain parts of the press have been stirring up scare stories about rubbish piling up on our streets for weeks, giving off bad smells and attracting vermin. Not only is a concern, it is also an election issue according to the Daily Mail. Many years ago, our council changed from twice weekly collections to weekly collections and similar stories were spun but were never realised. At that time the bins were changed from small metal bins that the bin men carried to the truck and emptied to larger bins with single use removable liners, starting a trend of producing plastic bags with a single use-putting it in the bin. I don't know the details of individual fortnightly bin collections around England, but the new f...

Do you take milk? We do. And we recently came across a new way to buy it and to save the environment. No more plastic bottles or Tetra-Paks...

I began writing this a couple of weeks ago, about Glasgow City Council's inability to implement a half decent recycling scheme but didn't quite get around to finishing and posting it.  Since then, there have been signs of improvement, which I'll come on to after outlining the situation in the recent past. HISTORICAL SITUATION Glasgow likes to think of itself as the ‘Dear Green Place’ but it is unfortunately far from Green. Although the city is being promoted as a hub for renewable energy with both Scottish Power and Scottish & Southern Energy locating their renewable energy divisions in the city, the city recycles less than 16% of domestic waste. An assessment of the UKs twenty largest cities,shown below, ranked Glasgow as the 19th most sustainable city overall and 20th in terms of recycling, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that is last place.  With the UK being one of the poorest nations in Europe at recycling, the comparison is grim.