Good morning Mastodon!
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But the worst one is batteries. Most people now (hopefully!) know you shouldn't put batteries in your domestic waste, but only recognise batteries as the little AA cylinders rather than recognising batteries as being in little household things like toothbrushes, hearing aids, ear pods or vibrators where they're sealed in and invisible. Vapes are a huge one, and although single use vapes have been banned vapes with a recharge port at a similar price point are still being treated as single use disposable items. These cause a lot of fires in waste collection lorries when they're compacted, but also fires at waste management plants which want the fire in one place only, the kiln. So remove batteries from small electronic devices for disposal if you can, and if you can't dispose of the whole device in the battery recycling bin that every shop selling batteries should by law have available.
So basically stick your broken sex toys in the clear plastic battery bin in Sainsburys
@afewbugs there was a big fire at the Waste Recycling plant down in Bermonsey, London on Monday. They are still investigating what started it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't down to batteries. This was my local recycling centre when we lived in London. Needless to say not very accessible to domestic users if you didn't have a car or use of a van.
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@afewbugs
The SIP ones are made of thick steel with a removable screw in valve. There's no reason why they can't be reused other than them being low value so no-one can be arsed.@afewbugs
Actually I'm surprised they didn't come out of the pile - they used to have a big magnet to remove the ferrous waste for recycling. -
Also as a little postscript, in a facility where 95% of the staff I saw were male presenting I was impressed by the fact that there were free menstrual products in the toilets
@afewbugs I love the fediverse
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@marjolica it's a lovely ride beside the water up from St Davids, and completely flat
@afewbugs hopefully you didn't get too wet.
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Good morning Mastodon! Remember when you were in primary school and went on school trips to places teachers though were important or free, and retained nothing from them except for who was sick on whom on the way there? Now you're older and nerdier did you ever think "Actually it might be really interesting to visit a major piece of civic infrastructure and learn how it works?" Just me? Well I was in luck today because the University sustainability team has organised a tour of #Exeter Energy Recovery Facility in #MarshBarton, where all our non-recyclable rubbish ends up.
https://www.viridor.co.uk/energy/energy-recovery-facilities/exeter-erf/
@afewbugs oh superb, I wonder when the next openday is....
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Ferrous metals get pulled out by an electromagnet. Non ferrous metals melt into these weird modern art type sculptures that clog up the pipes and are the reason the plant has to be periodically shut down for maintenance to remove them. So I guess the moral is don't put metal in your non recyclable waste, but if you're going to only put ferrous metal?
@afewbugs I once wiped a couple of hard drives by putting them in a bonfire. We now have some pretty ace Xmas tree decorations.
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Anyway I had a brilliant day, and I love seeing people work together to do very clever things to solve problems, but we can't lose track of the fact that this isn't actually a good thing it's just the least bad option we have for disposing of waste because it's still sending greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and what we really need to be working on as a species is generating less waste to start with. The presentation also shared the depressing statistic that only 2/3 of humanity has access to any waste collection and disposal infrastructure at all, and the rest just have to deal with it themselves by burning it or dumping it around their living spaces (something I encountered in a previous life doing ecology fieldwork in The Gambia https://geekinthegambia.blogspot.com/2009/06/setsetal.html)
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But the worst one is batteries. Most people now (hopefully!) know you shouldn't put batteries in your domestic waste, but only recognise batteries as the little AA cylinders rather than recognising batteries as being in little household things like toothbrushes, hearing aids, ear pods or vibrators where they're sealed in and invisible. Vapes are a huge one, and although single use vapes have been banned vapes with a recharge port at a similar price point are still being treated as single use disposable items. These cause a lot of fires in waste collection lorries when they're compacted, but also fires at waste management plants which want the fire in one place only, the kiln. So remove batteries from small electronic devices for disposal if you can, and if you can't dispose of the whole device in the battery recycling bin that every shop selling batteries should by law have available.
So basically stick your broken sex toys in the clear plastic battery bin in Sainsburys
@afewbugs thanks for the advice, I will.
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@afewbugs hopefully you didn't get too wet.
@marjolica just soggy enough for my clothes to absorb plenty of rubbish smell
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Good morning Mastodon! Remember when you were in primary school and went on school trips to places teachers though were important or free, and retained nothing from them except for who was sick on whom on the way there? Now you're older and nerdier did you ever think "Actually it might be really interesting to visit a major piece of civic infrastructure and learn how it works?" Just me? Well I was in luck today because the University sustainability team has organised a tour of #Exeter Energy Recovery Facility in #MarshBarton, where all our non-recyclable rubbish ends up.
https://www.viridor.co.uk/energy/energy-recovery-facilities/exeter-erf/
@afewbugs they’re amazing places, aren’t they? I work at Loughborough uni, and our sustainability team organised a similar trip of our local incinerator/generation site. It was so interesting and informative, with some really eye-opening facts and figures
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Also as a little postscript, in a facility where 95% of the staff I saw were male presenting I was impressed by the fact that there were free menstrual products in the toilets
@afewbugs and good ones too, TOTM are excellent quality
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@afewbugs they’re amazing places, aren’t they? I work at Loughborough uni, and our sustainability team organised a similar trip of our local incinerator/generation site. It was so interesting and informative, with some really eye-opening facts and figures
@WiteWulf they really are!
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Waste is then collected from the pit using this giant claw and dropped into the hopper feeding the kiln
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But the worst one is batteries. Most people now (hopefully!) know you shouldn't put batteries in your domestic waste, but only recognise batteries as the little AA cylinders rather than recognising batteries as being in little household things like toothbrushes, hearing aids, ear pods or vibrators where they're sealed in and invisible. Vapes are a huge one, and although single use vapes have been banned vapes with a recharge port at a similar price point are still being treated as single use disposable items. These cause a lot of fires in waste collection lorries when they're compacted, but also fires at waste management plants which want the fire in one place only, the kiln. So remove batteries from small electronic devices for disposal if you can, and if you can't dispose of the whole device in the battery recycling bin that every shop selling batteries should by law have available.
So basically stick your broken sex toys in the clear plastic battery bin in Sainsburys
@afewbugs or don't be so violent with your sex toys in the first place?
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@afewbugs or don't be so violent with your sex toys in the first place?
@UkeleleEric all things are finite, all things must come to an end, one day even sex toys must shuffle off this mortal coil to the great bedside drawer in the sky.
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Good morning Mastodon! Remember when you were in primary school and went on school trips to places teachers though were important or free, and retained nothing from them except for who was sick on whom on the way there? Now you're older and nerdier did you ever think "Actually it might be really interesting to visit a major piece of civic infrastructure and learn how it works?" Just me? Well I was in luck today because the University sustainability team has organised a tour of #Exeter Energy Recovery Facility in #MarshBarton, where all our non-recyclable rubbish ends up.
https://www.viridor.co.uk/energy/energy-recovery-facilities/exeter-erf/
@afewbugs oh cool! I came here too…we took our twinning group there as I recall! We know how to show the French a good time.
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When we visited the world's biggest claw machine was operated by an extremely tolerant bloke called Ashley, who very good naturedly answered all our questions while trying to get on with his job. A couple of people told him he had the coolest job in the world, to which he replied that it had been for the first six hours or so but after that it got a bit boring.
@afewbugs Best thread on the Internet today. Thanks so much for sharing!
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@afewbugs Best thread on the Internet today. Thanks so much for sharing!
@NatalyaD I'm really glad so many people enjoyed it!
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The Marsh Barton facility isn't actually owned by the council, it has a contract with company Viridor which it pays to operate it. This is all utterly insane and probably Margaret Thatcher's fault.
@afewbugs I think it's the treasury's rules about what counts as public deficit, so it's "better" to effectively lease "public" infrastructure than just pat for it using cheap government money.
I expect @ChrisMayLA6 can explain it better than I can
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Waste gases coming out of the kiln are mostly carbon dioxide from the combustion of all those carbon-based plastics that didn't make it to recycling and organic materials. They shared this interesting slide of what residual waste is actually made up of, after doing an extensive and probably deeply unpleasant survey separating out and weighing the contents of those bags. A depressing amount could have been composted or recycled
@afewbugs "WEEE, For when you're taking the piss with superfluous vowels."
