Our local authority, Craven District Council, have recently announced that they will, in common with several other local authorities, reduce domestic waste collections from weekly to fortnightly. They claim that there is no evidence that this will cause an increased public health risk.

When faced with a superficially dubious proposition a friend of my used to resort to an "appeal to reason" by testing an "upside down" version. Here this would be "Would more collections increase the public health risk?" Answers on a postcard etc...

They are also helping to reduce our consumption of plastic bags by advising us to wrap some items because of the longer residence in the bins (Incidentally we have no "single use" plastic bags - they are all re-used unless damaged or dirty)

We are also the proud possessors of  blue recycling bins with internal containers for glass and tins, the main space being for paper. We have already been told that they no longer separate glass and tins, so the two containers now do the same job. We are now told that we will be able to mix plastic bottles, tins, and glass in the same blue bin. The two internal containers are now redundant, and we will be given PLASTIC BAGS for waste paper!. This too enables us to cut down on our usage of plastic bags, and maybe to recycle some paper locally (rather than in CHINA, which is its current energy-efficient destination) by the good offices of our very strong winds.

Isn't the gratuitous disposal of things before they are worn out part of the reason for having so much waste to dispose of?

While these changes may well help our cash-strapped local authority financially might there not also be planning and global energy issues in all this? (Not to mention targets - an issue in itself)

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Well - Here I am yet again!! Faced with my first CFL failure I now wonder whether I should put it in the bin (as the previous DOE advice permitting the binning of up to 20 fluorescent tubes seemed to indicate (European Report p46)) or take it somewhere somehwere else. Being a law-abiding soul I thought I would check up, as the WEEE implementation should have changed things since, as well as mercury,  LELs/CFLs also contain a PCB (printed circuit board). 

And indeed it has. But to what?

DEFRA advice
"The public should contact the local authority for advice on where to dispose of broken or intact CFLs as they should be treated as hazardous waste and should not be disposed of in the bin." 

House of Commons briefing paper "The phasing out of incandecent light bulbs" SN/SC/4958 24/7/09
"All retailers have to provide return and recycling facilities" 

Incidentally the House of Commons can't spell "fluorescent".

I bought this bulb from B&Q who did not make a point of telling me about their return and recycling facilities. They are 14 miles away.

My local authority (Craven District Council) have a rather good recycling facility in Settle, and would almost certainly accept my dead CFL. They are 11 miles away. 

A special trip to either, using over 2 litres of petrol, would use about 20 Kwh of energy, directly contribute about 7 Kg of CO2 to the atmosphere, and more than cancel the energy saving I may have made with this bulb.

The temptation to put it in the bin is almost (but not quite) overwhelming! 

I bet I'm not alone.

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I've been less enthusiastic about this recently because, despite the evidence against and the paucity of evidence for, the "machine" is winning, as incandescent bulbs of any useful wattage vanish from our shops.

But I do get drawn back in! 

There are three new items which I should point out to you:

1) "Dangers of Low Energy Lightbulbs" Daily Express 14/3/09

If you have already read "Low Energy Light Bulbs – Savers or Wasters?" and "Low Energy Light Bulbs – More about Mercury" and blog you won't find anything new here, but it is interesting to see one of our largest national newspapers making some noise about the subject! I suspect that a fading echo of the noise is all that will result.

2) "The Indian experience of CFLs"

An electrical engineer from India with a long practical experience of using CFLs points out that the lifetime and quality of CFLs is hugely varianble - from 6 months (!!!) to 6 years depending on their origin. If this is true then the money saving argument for CFLs collapses for many users.

He believes that manufacture to international standards is the answer.

3) At long last!! An answer to embedded energy

If you go to http://thewatt.com/node/175 (thanks to Jason for the link) you will find a highly technical and competent treatment of this issue. The author's conclusion is that a CFL only needs to operate for 50 hours to pay back its embedded energy. I haven't yet fully taken in this article, but, while I am fairly persuaded by it, I would make the following points:
 

1) The basis article is from the proceedings of "Right Light" - the bi-annual European Conference for Energy-Efficiency - who might be thought of as having a view in the same manner as the Daily Express. The full title is:

"Life Cycle Analyses of Integral Compact Fluorescent Lamps Versus Incandescent Lamps - Energy and Emissions" by Annette Gydesen & Dorte Maimann, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark which can be downloaded from: http://www.iaeel.org/iaeel/Archive/Right_Light_Proceedings/Abstracts/RL1_Abstracts/RL1AbE11.html

2) There is only a guesstimate for disposal energy cost.

3)There is/was a fascinating discussion sequence on the page which showed that the issue is still not clear-cut. In particular alternative sources of embedded energy calculations would be valuable. Today (11-2-2010) I can't find it any more???

MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF THE ECO-DESIGN CONSULTATION. FORUM HELD ON 28 MARCH 2008. General Lighting product
 
 

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I was rather delighted to hear Peter Jones (Government recycling adviser) on the BBC 24 hour news service (21.22 27/1/2009) saying 

"We've got to urgently, I believe, start getting a grip on how this material is fed through the system, whether we're actually adding to or reducing the overall impact in terms of global warming potential of this process." 

I sometimes feel a bit lonely asking this sort of question. After a lifetime of working in industrial research, I am of the firm opinion that answering questions like this is stage 1 of any project. Much of what is being done to address global warming seems to be exploitation of commercial opportunities supported by conviction (It must be right/it shall be done) and feasibility (it can be done) rather than analysis (should it be done?).

I wonder if he will get an answer?

In a similar way I am suspicious of the energy credentials of our local garden waste recycling scheme. I believe that garden waste should be recycled (wherever possible) by composting within the garden. This is because garden waste contains nutrients ("goodness") which have come from the soil, and taking it somewhere else means that these nutrients have to be replaced. The only recycling exception I would make (because of the severe difficulties in small gardens) would be trees and the like.

The scheme does not accept trees and branches, but does accept all the things which I think should be kept. It produces the following energy (for which please, at present, read CO2) demands:
 
 

I only use the service for one thing. It accepts poisonous hedge cuttings. Previously I burned these (biomass conversion to CO2 which is going to happen anyway when composted).

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CFLs (aka LELs - Low Energy lightbulbs) are back! The Daily Mail is reporting "panic buying" of tungsten bulbs. Others "slam Mail energy efficient bulb scare story". This is a bit of a hobby horse of mine (Low Energy Lightbulbs). So brace yourselves!
 
 

Can you guess which sides of the argument these organisations are on?

Old hands won't learn anything new here - lots of old chestnuts. But it is interesting to see which arguments are being used today.
 

"Critics say they can cause skin rashes, migraines and epilepsy" (Daily Mail).  CFLs are just fluorescent strip lights in disguise. We have had them for many years. There are people who react to this type of light, and they should be excused CFLs. But most of us are not affected, and have not been affected.

"Concerns over the Mercury contained in CFLs was also downplayed. The Lighting Association said that all CFL bulbs were in line with EU regulations governing the use of hazardous substances, adding that guidance was widely available to ensure consumers dispose of bulbs safely." (BusinessGreen.com).  Yes - but do you know what it is or where to look for it? Try the DEFRA website, and also read the section about "How should I deal with a broken CFL?" which includes "Vacate the room and ventilate it for at least 15 minutes...". Draw your own health conclusions!

My beef is and always has been that important issues are avoided and downplayed in the rush to CFLs. I STILL don't know if they save CO2 on a global scale (vital!) - all I know is that people assert this without presenting evidence. In addition mercury is "brushed under the carpet", while disposal problems and health issues are glossed over. 

But these issues are tractable. I suspect that our governments are nervous about telling us too much, in case we don't understand and come to a different conclusion!

And I can't help but be a little suspicious of the money involved in changing to LELs. My estimate (see More about Mercury) is that the UK tungsten light bulb stock will be replaced by about 400,000,000 LELs per year - perhaps a bit less if they really do last longer. At anywhere between £1 and £8 each, according to my recent shopping experiences, this adds up to between £400,000,000 and £3,200,000,000 pounds (£3.2 billion) per year.

That's an awful lot of turnover and financial clout!
 

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This will be brief as it's both a little and a big idea.

High fuel prices hit the poorest hardest. In the saddest cases some people, particularly the elderly, feel that they can't afford to heat their homes and die of hypothermia. This has already happened, and could happen again. People with money tend not to die of hypothermia.

We are also concerned about using too much energy and increasing global warming, although it has been near-invisible as a news item this week (recession, India terrorism)!

I have felt for some time that if we (as a people, a nation, or whatever) were serious about reducing energy consumption we would turn our pricing system upside down. Why encourage people to use more by making energy cheaper at higher usage?  These are the unit costs on my most recent gas and electricity bills (in UK pence/kilowatt-hour):
 
 

So after I've used quite a bit the price halves.

If we want to cut down energy use surely the tariffs should be the other way round with the unit cost going up the more you use. This could have the important fringe benefit of eliminating fuel poverty, particularly if the first x units (where "x" is enough to survive) were FREE.

An end to fuel poverty?

This seems like an impossible dream, and I don't expect it to happen. I wish it would.
 
 

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During World War II we cut down lots of nice iron railings to support the war effort.

"The railings were said to have been melted down and used for munitions, but in reality this was often an exercise to boost morale"

This is a quote from the COI News Distribution Service, and is therefore somewhat official. Will we say something similar in the future about waste recycling?

I arrive at these pessimistic thoughts because of recent news about the "recycled" waste mountains which are building up in the UK (see for example "Recycling industry in a slump"). This is because the price for waste has collapsed thanks to reduced demand, which is in turn due to the credit crunch (banks have a lot to answer for already - no doubt this will grow). And a large part of the market is China. On the other side of the world!

I would think that many people rather like the idea of recycling, as summed up by the nice (green) official logo above. This gives us a comfortable feeling of things going round and round, with no waste and no demands on the planet for additional materials. Of course everyone realises that it can't be as simple as this, but we would expect it to be close. The recent news highlights just how far from reality this image is.

I guess that most of us think (or thought) that, for example, the waste paper we carefully sort out is collected and taken to somewhere not too far away where it is reprocessed into slightly brown paper or the like. Far from it - literally! It turns out that much of it goes to China and the Far East. I have no axe to grind with these countries at all. My hangup is about tranportation. Clearly shipping to "round the corner" and the "Far East" involve using up vastly different amounts of energy. And I thought that was what much of this was about! 

I am particularly worried that I have heard several people who are (were) recycling converts saying basically "What's the point"? There used to be a rather clever saying - "Think globally - act locally". I thought this encompassed much of what we needed to do to save the environment and, ultimately, ourselves and our children.  But, if our waste goes half way round the world, what's the point?

Could it be just to boost morale? Like the railings?
 
 

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