Good morning Mastodon!
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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."
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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 The US still makes battery recycling a pain. Recycling bins are not in very many shops, most cities have no curbside pickup of them - you'd have to drive them to the recycling or hazmat center which is usually only one or two per city and only open certain hours.
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The Exeter and Plymouth plants incinerate residual waste (ie what's left over when everything recyclable or compostable has been removed) and generate electricity. There were plans to use the generated heat of the Exeter plant for a district heating system but they never came to fruition. The Plymouth plant does run a district heating system which heats the neighbouring Royal Navy barracks and dockyard, and I'm honestly not sure how I feel about the fact we can manage to implement the most sustainable solution, but apparently only in the service of waging war more efficiently
@afewbugs I suspect that district heating schemes are easier to organise when you have a large, homogeneous block of housing - e.g. a big, new estate, or large office building complex. Sheffield's incinerator heats the flats that overlook the station, as well as lots of city council buildings and (I think) some of the Sheffield Hallam Uni buildings.
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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 I loved this. following!
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On the subject of Things Not To Put In Your Bin, it sounds obvious but things that will explode is a big one. Explosions can damage the specialist heat proof lining of the kiln, forcing it to be shut down for maintenance or even requiring it to be replaced, and explosions can also force gases through the filtration system faster than it can deal with them causing air pollution. People are apparently throwing away gas cylinders, which is crazy because domestic cooking and heating gas cannisters can be returned for a deposit. Empty camping gas cannisters can be returned to any outdoor shop selling gas cannisters.
@afewbugs
BTW, you only get a refund on calor gas cylinders if you have a purchase receipt, but dealers will still take in unwanted cylinders.
