The Positives

Initially, glass recycling centres tended to deal more with the former, but in the last ten years or so, there has been a more common issue of the latter – the disposal of broken glass at centres. This has become a greater concern for several reasons. While the staff in care would probably not actually touch the broken glass with their bare hands, it is still possible for them to become injured by shards flying off when they are sorting out the waste.

Methods employed by their site have improved over time to reduce this risk, however.now, glass is a very interesting waste asset in that it has a multitude of uses outside of its primary function. There are many ways in which these materials can be re-purposed, all of which have their time and place depending on the needs of the environment around them. Below are some examples of just simple things that you can do with your old glass containers:. In the main, this material tends to be auto recyclable, which means that it can be recycled by using a process called thermal recycling.

Once it arrives at the back of your local centre, a series of conveyors will split up the material and identify glass from any other materials. This is done using radiological scanning equipment and also by weighing the load.the glass doesn’t have to be cleaned before disposing, but it does need to be dry. If you take it in a van, then clean it at the recycling centre itself; you’ll be spared the time and effort of having to clean it later. When you’re stacking your load of waste, make sure that it remains balanced – wasted time and wasted energy is what you want to avoid.the general rule is that if you have glass, you should recycle it.

We cant discount the benefits of recycling glass generally either, which has been widely spoken about when it comes to benefits to the environment and our planet overall. Whether it be shipped across the seas and oceans or collected and used within the uk.this is certainly a positive, as glass can be reused considerably more times than many other materials. One little known fact, is that there are around 140,000 tonnes of a grade glass collected from uk households every year. Furthermore, roughly 50% of this is recycled into asphalt for road surfaces.

The Negatives

As you may be aware the pub industry has been hit hard recently with some shocking headline figures showing that over 1,000 pubs have closed in the last three years alone.

This is a staggering amount of pubs disappearing from our high streets and as an industry we’ve become experts at cutting costs; including the use of plastic to the disappointment of many.

The result of these closures has resulted in a new trend emerging which was picked up on by michelin starred chef hugh fearnly-whittingstall.the initial output of the trial was satisfactory as we have seen a reduction in the volumes of waste collected from our pubs over the last year. However, since july, the number of food waste collections is on the rise again and is starting to return to levels prior to our involvement with refood.even with such encouraging statistics, unfortunately there were still some negatives shared in recent weeks.

Although pub closures had reduced volumes of waste to be recycled, it seems there are high numbers of food and drink waste items arriving from unusable supplies, like out of date beer.not what you would generally expect from a warm summer evening, but on thursday 26th august hundreds of people in southampton will find themselves picking up food waste and having to suffer the stench of rotting vegetables — and they claimed it was “lucky i had a gas mask”.it’s difficult to analyse the figures which are currently available, but they don’t look positive in terms of recycling.

The closure of pubs in recent years means less waste matter is finding its way to food banks, so there’s also less point in recycling it.the results from our survey have shown that food waste levels remain high. To highlight the scale of this issue, 36% of pubs said that they were currently throwing away around 1,000kg of still edible food every week.

To Summarise

Although the loss of the local boozer is a very sad thing to witness for anyone who considers themselves part of the great british culture, the positive impacts behind them are not insubstantial.

With fewer pubs serving alcoholic drinks in their local area and more people opting for convenient forms of drinking, such as cans in the house or bottles from off-licences or supermarkets, it has definitely had a positive effect on the environment.in an age of bring your own mug for refills and reduced use plastic bags, it may seem trite to think we could ever overlook the uk’s drinking culture.

But in a recent study from the university of sheffield looking at the impact of the recent pub closure crisis on recycling, they found that avid drinkers collectively produce less waste than individuals with limited alcohol consumption.very few places in the uk were unaffected by the pub closures, with it ending up hitting at least half of localities. The more rural areas seem to have been hit harder, with nearly every single community being affected, thought those in urban areas still being faced with significant reductions.