[Help] Cardboard

[Official Old Man]

I get a fair amount of cardboard each week, about a small van load, and used to take it to Skip It in Shoreham but they shut down the yard recently. I can put it into a general waste bin but I'd rather recycle. Anyone know of somewhere local to Brighton or Lewes where I can recycle or a company that can collect?
The council waste tip wont take commercial cardboard. Maybe it's time they did?

 

[father_and_son]

I get a fair amount of cardboard each week, about a small van load, and used to take it to Skip It in Shoreham but they shut down the yard recently. I can put it into a general waste bin but I'd rather recycle. Anyone know of somewhere local to Brighton or Lewes where I can recycle or a company that can collect?
The council waste tip wont take commercial cardboard. Maybe it's time they did?

Don't have an answer... but why the f*ck do the council get picky about the source of the cardboard they collect?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but surely councils sell on the recyclable waste that they collect. I accept it may be just a few pence per ton or whatever, but surely cardboard is cardboard? Why would stuff coming from a business be treated differently from stuff coming from someone's home?

Put onerous rules on business drop offs, like it must be pre-flattened or whatever, don't collect it, just accept at recycle centres, but how on earth are we (B&H anyway) supposed to become the green city the Green's want us to be when we are making it difficult for businesses to be green?

EDIT: Not talking about rubbish in general. I get that businesses pay extra to have waste removed and this is appropriate (though I believe B&H council have some overly simplistic rules on setting charges), but clean and sorted recycling should be treated differently to "general waste".

 

[Icy Gull]

And people wonder why there is so much flytipping

 

[Official Old Man]

Don't have an answer... but why the f*ck do the council get picky about the source of the cardboard they collect?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but surely councils sell on the recyclable waste that they collect. I accept it may be just a few pence per ton or whatever, but surely cardboard is cardboard? Why would stuff coming from a business be treated differently from stuff coming from someone's home?

Put onerous rules on business drop offs, like it must be pre-flattened or whatever, don't collect it, just accept at recycle centres, but how on earth are we (B&H anyway) supposed to become the green city the Green's want us to be when we are making it difficult for businesses to be green?

EDIT: Not talking about rubbish in general. I get that businesses pay extra to have waste removed and this is appropriate (though I believe B&H council have some overly simplistic rules on setting charges), but clean and sorted recycling should be treated differently to "general waste".

THIS
Skip It would take in cardboard, bundle it up and ship it out by the lorry load. I tried to take my cardboard to my local waste recycling centre but they wouldn't take it. Commercial waste, go away! No matter how much I WANT to recycle, it seems the council aren't interested.

 

[father_and_son]

THIS
Skip It would take in cardboard, bundle it up and ship it out by the lorry load. I tried to take my cardboard to my local waste recycling centre but they wouldn't take it. Commercial waste, go away! No matter how much I WANT to recycle, it seems the council aren't interested.

Tell them you just moved house and these are all the boxes from the move, that you have already recycled once by taking them from a local business.

Next week when you turn up with another van-load, just say "Yeah, I moved again"

 

[VAL1850]

Build a bonfire, build a bonfire
Put Bill Archer on the top
Add Greg Stanley and Bellotti
And we'll burn the ****ing lot

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Don't have an answer... but why the f*ck do the council get picky about the source of the cardboard they collect?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but surely councils sell on the recyclable waste that they collect. I accept it may be just a few pence per ton or whatever, but surely cardboard is cardboard? Why would stuff coming from a business be treated differently from stuff coming from someone's home?

Put onerous rules on business drop offs, like it must be pre-flattened or whatever, don't collect it, just accept at recycle centres, but how on earth are we (B&H anyway) supposed to become the green city the Green's want us to be when we are making it difficult for businesses to be green?

EDIT: Not talking about rubbish in general. I get that businesses pay extra to have waste removed and this is appropriate (though I believe B&H council have some overly simplistic rules on setting charges), but clean and sorted recycling should be treated differently to "general waste".

A couple of years ago I was on a residents panel setup to discuss the future of City Clean waste management. A number of meetings and presentations on how it works, what they wanted to do etc etc. City Clean wanted to compete with the private commercial waste collectors - partly to try and raise some extra funds and partly because they thought they could do it better. The problem being that they are given barely enough money to run the residential collections before even finding enough to expand the service into the commercial side. The collection of recycling costs more than they can make in selling it. So where does that money need to come from ? It seems a bit unfair for the council tax payers to pick up the tab. Equally businesses will point out they pay high business rates - but of course councils don't get all this money ( thank you Mrs May ! ). Not sure what the answer is but I certainly don't think it's as simple as City Clean just suddenly picking up commercial recycling.

 

[GOM]

Equally businesses will point out they pay high business rates - but of course councils don't get all this money ( thank you Mrs May ! ).

Prior to 2012 they got none of it (so thank you Mrs May).

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Prior to 2012 they got none of it (so thank you Mrs May).

It was actually Brown that started the process of councils getting some of the business rates. A bill was due to go before Parliament to give them 100% but was pulled because May called a snap GE - so thank you Mrs May

 

[Pantani]

If it is commercial waste, no matter how small a business, you should be paying to get it picked up by a commercial waste collector. That is what all other businesses have to do. Can you imagine how much cardboard the council would have to deal with if all commercial enterprises could just ask the council to collect if for nothing?

There are loads of businesses that will collect for you, Biffa, Kier, Suez, Veolia, some smaller local companies, in whatever amount you use, some will even just do single collections as and when you need. Just google it.

 

[father_and_son]

A couple of years ago I was on a residents panel setup to discuss the future of City Clean waste management. A number of meetings and presentations on how it works, what they wanted to do etc etc. City Clean wanted to compete with the private commercial waste collectors - partly to try and raise some extra funds and partly because they thought they could do it better. The problem being that they are given barely enough money to run the residential collections before even finding enough to expand the service into the commercial side. The collection of recycling costs more than they can make in selling it. So where does that money need to come from ? It seems a bit unfair for the council tax payers to pick up the tab. Equally businesses will point out they pay high business rates - but of course councils don't get all this money ( thank you Mrs May ! ). Not sure what the answer is but I certainly don't think it's as simple as City Clean just suddenly picking up commercial recycling.

I get that the collection of waste is expensive, so much so that you need a substantial tonnage of scrap cardboard to make any money. However, what the council have is a series of local, purpose built centres designed to accept and hold waste on a large scale.

If small businesses were given the choice... pay for someone to collect or bring it to a central place yourselves... then I suspect most will accept it as a cost of doing business and pay for Biffa or whoever to come and empty a dumpster once a week.

However, a number of small businesses will actually choose a green route... "Hey, I generate lots of cardboard waste but very little of anything else. I could take the cardboard to the dump and only have a wheelie bin for the rest of my non-recyclable, commercial waste."

There is a council run tip down the road that is designed to aggregate up the recycling from a small catchment area to make recycling it cost-viable... that's what they do. Allowing small business to (voluntarily) bring additional, clean cardboard waste to that site to be collected en masse by a recycler must be more cost effective (by any measure) then allowing mixed waste to go to independent contractors to be sorted and shipped on. Small businesses get to operate with lower overheads, the council are collecting cardboard anyway, the recyclers can collect their raw materials more cost effectively, etc etc.

If small businesses generate, say (I'm guessing) ten times the volume of cardboard waste than households do, then the potential to actually supplement City Clean's tax-derived income has to become more viable or at worst, no less viable, if they allowed clean cardboard waste from all sources. The site will still need to be there, the staff to operate it will still be there, but they have a better chance of reaching the tipping point where they can negotiate to sell their stock of waste rather than paying for it to be removed. Recycled cardboard must have a value (surely?), its only a case of balancing the economics so that it minimises the costs of moving from lots of places to one single place.

A little long term strategic thinking would stop us f*cking up the planet quite so quickly... and isn't that the principle reason the Green Party even exist!

 

[Birdie Boy]

I get a fair amount of cardboard each week, about a small van load, and used to take it to Skip It in Shoreham but they shut down the yard recently. I can put it into a general waste bin but I'd rather recycle. Anyone know of somewhere local to Brighton or Lewes where I can recycle or a company that can collect?
The council waste tip wont take commercial cardboard. Maybe it's time they did?

Skip It are now in Newhaven, is that too far? If you have a serious amount I can check with my mate who owns Skip It to see if they do pick ups. Or give them a call.

 

[GOM]

It was actually Brown that started the process of councils getting some of the business rates. A bill was due to go before Parliament to give them 100% but was pulled because May called a snap GE - so thank you Mrs May

Didn't Gordon Brown disappear from the scene in 2010, long before May had the power to call a GE. or are you referring to another Brown ?

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Didn't Gordon Brown disappear from the scene in 2010, long before May had the power to call a GE. or are you referring to another Brown ?

Gordon Brown put in place a mechanism to allow councils to get some of the business rates not all. If I remember correctly the average was about 50% of the rates. Cameron's / May's government saw giving 100% of the rates as a way of funding local government without any need for money from central government. Of course they've reduced the payments from central government before increasing the amount of the business rates councils can get - hence the local cuts. There was a bill to be put before parliament to give 100% of the rates to councils but didn't get any time to be discussed thanks to the snap GE.