Recycling

[mm]

Is there a good recycling newsgroup.

Or is that on-topic here?

I figure that after cleaning comes recycling so it is relevant, but
maybe there is a better ng for this.

Since I'm here, my current two questions are,

What to do when I find a nice tool, like water-pump pliers, that don't
work well. A cheap design, and probably cheaply made, and now only
works right in one position out of five. The other four slip back
into the first. I'm afraid a charity relacted thrift store will still
charge more than the thing is worth, and if I label it, "25 c" , I'm
afraid they'll still charge 2 dollars and cheat someone
unintentionally.

Are there any recyclable plastics that aren't labelled with that
3-arrow triangle, with the number inside. Like the bags for
vegetables at the supermarket,

and the tops of bubble packs (sometimes those are quite thick and have
a lot of plastic in them.)

Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let
me know if you have posted also.

[Nan]

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 11:42:18 -0400, mm <NOPSAMmm2005@bigfoot.com>
wrote:

>Is there a good recycling newsgroup.
>
>Or is that on-topic here?
>
>I figure that after cleaning comes recycling so it is relevant, but
>maybe there is a better ng for this.
>
>Since I'm here, my current two questions are,
>
>What to do when I find a nice tool, like water-pump pliers, that don't
>work well. A cheap design, and probably cheaply made, and now only
>works right in one position out of five. The other four slip back
>into the first. I'm afraid a charity relacted thrift store will still
>charge more than the thing is worth, and if I label it, "25 c" , I'm
>afraid they'll still charge 2 dollars and cheat someone
>unintentionally.

If you have things you want to give away you can try an organization
called Freecycle. It's purpose is to gift others with items you wish
to keep out of landfills. You can go to www.freecycle.org and see if
there is one near you. If there isn't, it's pretty easy to start one.
I've given away *a lot* of items on ours.

>Are there any recyclable plastics that aren't labelled with that
>3-arrow triangle, with the number inside. Like the bags for
>vegetables at the supermarket,
>
>and the tops of bubble packs (sometimes those are quite thick and have
>a lot of plastic in them.)

These things, I'd probably drop off at our local recycling center.

Nan

[Gregory Morrow]

mm wrote:

> Since I'm here, my current two questions are,
>
> What to do when I find a nice tool, like water-pump pliers, that don't
> work well. A cheap design, and probably cheaply made, and now only
> works right in one position out of five. The other four slip back
> into the first. I'm afraid a charity relacted thrift store will still
> charge more than the thing is worth, and if I label it, "25 c" , I'm
> afraid they'll still charge 2 dollars and cheat someone
> unintentionally.


It's obviously totally useless, so toss it...no one would want such a piece
of junk.


> Are there any recyclable plastics that aren't labelled with that
> 3-arrow triangle, with the number inside. Like the bags for
> vegetables at the supermarket,
>
> and the tops of bubble packs (sometimes those are quite thick and have
> a lot of plastic in them.)


With plastic, paper, and glass you are wasting your time trying to "recycle"
them - there is absolutely NO market for recycling these items, it's simply
not cost/energy - effective.

--
Best
Greg

[Mrs Bonk]

Gregory Morrow wrote:
> mm wrote:
>
>> Since I'm here, my current two questions are,
>>
>> What to do when I find a nice tool, like water-pump pliers, that don't
>> work well. A cheap design, and probably cheaply made, and now only
>> works right in one position out of five. The other four slip back
>> into the first. I'm afraid a charity relacted thrift store will still
>> charge more than the thing is worth, and if I label it, "25 c" , I'm
>> afraid they'll still charge 2 dollars and cheat someone
>> unintentionally.
>
>
> It's obviously totally useless, so toss it...no one would want such a
> piece of junk.
>
>
>> Are there any recyclable plastics that aren't labelled with that
>> 3-arrow triangle, with the number inside. Like the bags for
>> vegetables at the supermarket,
>>
>> and the tops of bubble packs (sometimes those are quite thick and have
>> a lot of plastic in them.)
>
>
> With plastic, paper, and glass you are wasting your time trying to
> "recycle" them - there is absolutely NO market for recycling these items,
> it's simply not cost/energy - effective.

There is a man who collects paper once a week at my street. He employs
someone to shred it and bag it, someone else to deliver it after it's been
'recycled', his wife is on the phone dealing with clients/making new
clients. That's three people earning a wage from paper rubbish plus the
bonus being some is eventually composted.

[mm]

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 16:50:45 GMT, Nan <nobodys@home.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 11:42:18 -0400, mm <NOPSAMmm2005@bigfoot.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Is there a good recycling newsgroup.
>>
>>Or is that on-topic here?
>>
>>I figure that after cleaning comes recycling so it is relevant, but
>>maybe there is a better ng for this.
>>
>>Since I'm here, my current two questions are,
>>
>>What to do when I find a nice tool, like water-pump pliers, that don't
>>work well. A cheap design, and probably cheaply made, and now only
>>works right in one position out of five. The other four slip back
>>into the first. I'm afraid a charity relacted thrift store will still
>>charge more than the thing is worth, and if I label it, "25 c" , I'm
>>afraid they'll still charge 2 dollars and cheat someone
>>unintentionally.
>
>If you have things you want to give away you can try an organization
>called Freecycle. It's purpose is to gift others with items you wish
>to keep out of landfills. You can go to www.freecycle.org and see if
>there is one near you. If there isn't, it's pretty easy to start one.
>I've given away *a lot* of items on ours.

Thanks for your reply.

I'm not going to start one. I'm a good citizen, but a busy one.

I know plenty of places to give things to. There are loads of thrift
shops and I wouldn't even mind giving something to a profit-making
shop if I weren't worried they would over charge (I've seen that on
tv's)

I still could use an answer to my first question: Is this a fair
group to ask recycling questions, or is there one that specializes in
that.

But asking the question here directly helped me think of the answer in
this case. I have a friend, from ham radio swap meets, who usually
has a booth. If I give it to him and tell him it's only worth a
quarter, he won't charge more than that. I'll see him on the 29th.
Thanks. (Gregory, it does work fine and grips very firmly in one of
its 5 positions, and it might have some uses in the other four. If
someone doesn't have such a tool in his car's tool box, this would
certainly be worth adding, even though it wouldn't be right to charge
more than a quarter for it.)

>>Are there any recyclable plastics that aren't labelled with that
>>3-arrow triangle, with the number inside. Like the bags for
>>vegetables at the supermarket,
>>
>>and the tops of bubble packs (sometimes those are quite thick and have
>>a lot of plastic in them.)
>
>These things, I'd probably drop off at our local recycling center.

There is no one present at my local recycling centers. If there were
, and if I separated the Yes from the Maybe, I don't know if they
would know if the Maybes were really Yeses. . I'm talking about
plastics that aren't labeled as recyclable. I would assume they
aren't , but someone on the net might know about certain things that
are.

Plastic grocery bags are collected at the grocery I usually go to.
We have curbside platic recycling for other recyclable plastic. This
is why I need a detailed answer, or I'll continue not to include
things that aren't labelled.

We also have curbside collection separately of paper, glass &, metal
cans, trash, and in the fall, yard waste. I'm sure they try to sell
everything but the plain trash; and the presence of a constant supply
helps a lot to create the presence of a constant demand. Their rules
on glass, cans, and paper are pretty clear, but I have the feeling
that a lot of the plastic I get is the same stuff as is labelled with
the triangle, just not labelled.

>Nan


Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let
me know if you have posted also.

[mm]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 00:43:53 +0100, "Mrs Bonk" <arse@cutey.com> wrote:

>Gregory Morrow wrote:
>> mm wrote:
>>
>>> Since I'm here, my current two questions are,
>>>
>>> What to do when I find a nice tool, like water-pump pliers, that don't
>>> work well. A cheap design, and probably cheaply made, and now only
>>> works right in one position out of five. The other four slip back
>>> into the first. I'm afraid a charity relacted thrift store will still
>>> charge more than the thing is worth, and if I label it, "25 c" , I'm
>>> afraid they'll still charge 2 dollars and cheat someone
>>> unintentionally.
>>
>>
>> It's obviously totally useless, so toss it...no one would want such a
>> piece of junk.
>>
>>
>>> Are there any recyclable plastics that aren't labelled with that
>>> 3-arrow triangle, with the number inside. Like the bags for
>>> vegetables at the supermarket,
>>>
>>> and the tops of bubble packs (sometimes those are quite thick and have
>>> a lot of plastic in them.)
>>
>>
>> With plastic, paper, and glass you are wasting your time trying to
>> "recycle" them - there is absolutely NO market for recycling these items,
>> it's simply not cost/energy - effective.
>
>There is a man who collects paper once a week at my street. He employs
>someone to shred it and bag it, someone else to deliver it after it's been
>'recycled', his wife is on the phone dealing with clients/making new
>clients. That's three people earning a wage from paper rubbish plus the
>bonus being some is eventually composted.
>
>
My cousin has a scrap business (and a bachelor's in history and a
master's in business from Wharton),
as did his father (my uncle) (even though he had a law degree with
honors (Order of the Coif) from a decent law school)
as did his father-in-law (not my grandfather**) who came to the US a
bit over 100 years ago with nothing.

They deal in metal, paper, and rags.

They've explained to me how the price of paper goes up and down. In
the past, it could go so low it wasn't worth buying (even though I
think they still had school paper collection and he might have bought
the paper just to keep old non-profit customers happy. I don't know,
but maybe now with more potential customers (not just paper makers)

**For the record, both my grandfathersalso came to the US with less
than 5 dollars and were junk men too. One was able to move up by
buying or opening a small grocery store, and the other bought or
opened a small hardware store.

Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let
me know if you have posted also.

[0tterbot]

"mm"
>>>What to do when I find a nice tool, like water-pump pliers, that don't
>>>work well. A cheap design, and probably cheaply made, and now only
>>>works right in one position out of five. The other four slip back
>>>into the first. I'm afraid a charity relacted thrift store will still
>>>charge more than the thing is worth, and if I label it, "25 c" , I'm
>>>afraid they'll still charge 2 dollars and cheat someone
>>>unintentionally.

ime, they normally undercharge for good stuff, they don't tend to overcharge
for rubbish :-) if you were genuinely concerned but still wanted to give it
(or similar) to an op shop, attach a note saying it only works in one of
five positions & leave it in the laps of the gods (or the op shop ladies ;-)

> I still could use an answer to my first question: Is this a fair
> group to ask recycling questions, or is there one that specializes in
> that.

there's one on my server called free.uk.environment.recycling, but i'm not
sure if that's of use to you or not.

> We also have curbside collection separately of paper, glass &, metal
> cans, trash, and in the fall, yard waste. I'm sure they try to sell
> everything but the plain trash; and the presence of a constant supply
> helps a lot to create the presence of a constant demand. Their rules
> on glass, cans, and paper are pretty clear, but I have the feeling
> that a lot of the plastic I get is the same stuff as is labelled with
> the triangle, just not labelled.

yes, it would be.

you would need to ask the council or whoever it is who organises the
kerbside pickups, because they are different from place to place. (in fact,
THEY should have told YOU what they collect - that's how it works here :-)

for example, where i live we put out _any_ rigid plastics, whether marked or
not, because recyclable plastics come in 15 varieties that i know of, and
they simply aren't always marked (yet). yet where i used to live, they'd
collect numbers 1 - 6 if marked (or obvious, such as p.e.t.). despite the
fact all 15 (or whatever it is... 16?) are recyclable, they had facilities
to deal with 1 - 6 but not the others. here they clearly are able to deal
with the others or able to pass them on to someone who can, or, cannot deal
with them all but don't want to miss any of the common plastics they _can_
recycle.

another difference, in my old city they collected green garden waste (so we
had a special bin for that) but here they don't - we must take it to the
place ourselves. and so on. ime all councils do as much (in terms of
collection & recycling) as they have facilities for & expand their list of
recyclables as they go, but there's no point putting something in for
collection if it's going to be rejected. you just have to work with the
rules as apply in your area at the moment - which we can't know. :-)

so, yes - any sensible person would concur that many things are recyclable,
however, you need to find out from the council (or whoever - i don't even
know if you have councils) what is accepted in your area.
kylie

[Gregory Morrow]

Mrs Bonk wrote:

> There is a man who collects paper once a week at my street. He employs
> someone to shred it and bag it, someone else to deliver it after it's been
> 'recycled', his wife is on the phone dealing with clients/making new
> clients. That's three people earning a wage from paper rubbish plus the
> bonus being some is eventually composted.


Sounds rather "twee" to me...pray tell do you live in Teletubbie Land, Mrs.
B....???

--
Best
Greg