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The 'Three Rs' for sustainable waste managed are Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. The first of the three Rs, reduce, asks if there is any need for the item in the first place. If you don't need it then don't make it or buy it and then there won't be waste to deal with. However, there is very little these days which costs nothing to produce and leaves nothing behind as waste. So if you have something that has done its job ... can you reuse it? Could you make that thing useful again, maybe not for the original purpose. The final R, asks if the item can be broken down into constituent parts which can then be used as raw material to create something completely new.

Domestic recycling services are rather poor where I live. Recycling operates, but only insofar as there are separate bins for either 'garbage' or 'recycling'. The compliance from people living around here is so low that there is effectively no waste segregation. In London, only about a third of households bother separating their waste [1]. The efforts of those who do put recyclables into the recycling bins are undermined by a minority who either do not know (or care) about the difference and dump regular garbage into the recycling bin. This 'contaminates' the bin from the perspective of the recycling contractor and it is collected as if it were regular garbage. Most of UK's recycling is exported, because we can't or won't deal with it ourselves. In recent years, the poor quality of 'recyclable' waste sent abroad meant those countries either sent it back or buried/burned it [2].

I find both parts of this process incredibly frustrating: that people can't cope with (or actively oppose) such a basic idea as recycling and that recycling centres are unable to tolerate erroneous material in their stream. A recycling business may have its own reasons and thresholds for rejecting contaminated waste; it should be recycling the material it receives, not spending that time sorting and disposing of non-recyclables. As with many things, it therefore leaves the attitude of people as the main problem, and that is notoriously difficult to fix.

The options for more complicated recycling, beyond the usual paper/glass/metal routes are even more dire. Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) recycling is technically possible in the UK and many councils offer it but only via a drop-off station. Some are drive-in, some require appointments or permits. All of them require the individual to have the means to transport their waste to the collection station which, in a nation in which few people drive means that most people just won't engage in WEEE recycling. My local recycling centre issues annual permits which require a vehicle license plate number. This then locks out anyone who might use a zip-car or other hire service. Even if you lived right next door to the place, you are only allowed to drive in as walk-in waste drop-offs are specifically prohibited! So you cannot recycle electrical equipment unless you also own a car: it's very envionmentally friendly.

The practical outcome is that it becomes far easier to toss an old TV into the skip ... as garbage OR recycling, who cares?. Of all the waste disposal errors that I witness around home, the most infuriating is when perfectly good stuff is thrown out and in particular electronics. Tacit acknowledgement of these poor decisions is indicated by people who don't place their old laptop into the bin itself, but leave it to the side. It's a gesture, in the tradition of eternal British guilt, that says "I know doing this is wrong, so I'll go half-way... in case someone else is able to step in and correct my mistake".

I have retrieved several perfectly functional flatscreen TV sets from the bin. There is no clear reason why they were discarded although one had a bit of paper taped to it saying "lost remote sorry". Mind: boggled. Other times it's something as basic as a split power lead or a blown fuse (all UK power leads have fuses built in to the plug bit). I have also recovered perfectly functional computers from the bin. These I clean up and fix where needed. They always come with hard drives choc full of personal data; these get a random data scrub before reformatting and reinstallation of an operating system. If there's a valid Windows license sticker and I have the right recovery image I might put Windows back on too but these usually come stuffed with vendor crap so it's usually Ubuntu. Then they go on Freecycle [3] where someone usually snaps them up with an hour of the listing going live; a lot go to church groups who send them overseas. The TVs are usually easy to give away too, once it's established that they do work fine. Again, this is a great use of Freecycle ... people are much more willing to come get something when they know it's free!

For the moment FreeCycle and similar programs are closed down as many countries are on lockdown or are at least being sensible about reducing unnecessary personal contact and so I have a growing collection of flatscreen TVs appearing in the flat! It's going to be busy on the boards once people start moving around again...

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

2020 05 11

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