Recycling in France

[Beryl]

We have to recycle as much as possible, which I believe is a good thing. We have a cage for plastic bottles, carton and tins, a container for glass and another one for paper.

My query is that I buy meat in freezer size packs of thick polystyrene. Is the polystyrene recyclable and if so, where should I post it? I have been keeping it in the garage for the timebeing.

[Tresco]

There's usually a container at dechetteries for polystyrene. That's where we take ours anyway.

Strangely we got some advice recently which advised it was now OK to put it in with normal household waste.

[Beryl]

I did put it in the household waste to start with and then when I realised how common polystyrene packaging was, I thought it must be recyclable.I seem to have more polystyrene than tin cans.

[Tresco]

I'm pretty sure it is, or at least certain types of it are, and that when we take it to the tip it then goes to be transformed.

Maybe they got fed up of sorting through it, and that's why it can go in the bin? I'm not happy about it.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

From what I understand, polystyrene is not an easy plastic to recycle.

Unlike polyethylene, polypropylene and PET, it cannot simply be turned

into little beads ("prills" I am told they are called) and remolded at

elevated temperatures into new plastic whatsits & ho-haas. It can

be minced and pressed into (for example) sheets of insulation, but not

cost effectively, so there isn't much demand for this waste. This is

what the bloke at the dump told me when I turned up with a trailer load

of polystyrene packaging that ended up going into the "all other" bin

for land filling, somewhat to my disgust as it had that little

recycling logo stamped all over it.

[andyh4]

Polystyrene is eminently suitable for recycling.  Indeed just heating under vacuum will return PS back to styrene monomer.

The problem is that most PS packaging is expanded Polystyrene and 90% of the bulk is gas (air or CO2).  It is therefore inefficient to transport it back to a recycling point - a whole 18 wheel truck load could be less than 1te.

 

The most efficient recycling of expanded PS is to put it onto a hot closed fire and recover the heat energy by heating your house.  I stress however the fire should be hot and with a door to close so that any fumes are ensured to go up the chimney and be further oxidised there, rather than in your sitting room.  But do this in small bits unless you want to set fire to the chimney.

[Suze01]

By some coincidence, when I went to take my sacks to the bins the morning, one of the bins had not been emptied and was bearing a sticker from SMCTOM to say that it contained polystyrene (large lumps of packaging) and that it couldn't be recycled - instead of transferring it to the other bin they just refuse (pun!) to empty it.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="andyh4"]

Polystyrene is eminently suitable for recycling.  Indeed just heating under vacuum will return PS back to styrene monomer.

The problem is that most PS packaging is expanded Polystyrene and

90% of the bulk is gas (air or CO2).  It is therefore inefficient

to transport it back to a recycling point - a whole 18 wheel truck load

could be less than 1te.

[/quote]

This would make sense. I was thinking of the expanded stuff (hence the

comment about mincing and pressing), but of course PS does appear in

quite a lot of other guises in its un-expanded form - that, I guess,

would be worth trucking away.

The other thing that our décheterie will now no longer accept is old

tyres. Again, the chap at the dump tells me that no facilities exist

for recycling these anywhere locally. These are packed with useful

things - steel, styrene-butadiene and isobutyl rubbers, carbon black -

so it seems a terrible waste to throw them away.

[Teamedup]

I get sick of all this wrapping. I would love a journee nationale where we all took all the wrapping back to the shops we got it from. It may make the shops and manufacturers think a bit more it all.

 

Lets face it, we the shoppers would not have a problem, if all this stuff wasn't offloaded on us to start with.

 

Funny really when we first got here, there was often consigne on bottles, I don't know of anywhere that does it anymore.

[Deimos]

[quote user="Suze"]By some coincidence, when I went to take my sacks to the bins the morning, one of the bins had not been emptied and was bearing a sticker from SMCTOM to say that it contained polystyrene (large lumps of packaging) and that it couldn't be recycled - instead of transferring it to the other bin they just refuse (pun!) to empty it.

[/quote]

I used to get stickers from the refuse people all the time when I first moved here. Despite being told by the authorities that I should put xxx in the general waste it seems the dustmen did not agree and thus refused to collect the entire bin. A few bits of electric cable will cause the bin to be left full. Apparently I should get in my car and drive off-cuts of electric cable to the dump (wasting loads of petrol). Similarly, the e.g. plastic trays you get e.g. sliced salami in – not for recycling even though they carry the recyclable logo. Put one of those in the recycling bin (visible) and the bin will not be collected wont be collected !!.

Must confess that I think that the recycling regime in my area is counter productive as one has to keep betting in the car to drive bits of this and that to the dump (where they all end up in the same place anyway).

Ian