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recycling to save the planet!
does anyone have ideas on recycling waste from a sign workshop?
a friend of mine once remarked on how much waste there is when you make a sign, and I think he was referring to the vinyl that’s weeded out then binned.
then there’s all the off-cuts of material which are too small to do anything with and again vinyl – not forgetting application paper.
so far we recycle all paper, junk mail, cardboard, plastic drink cartons and where possible we reuse packing materials to protect goods for due for installation.
metal goes to the local recycle amenity site along with wood and timber.
small bits of coloured vinyl are taken to the local primary school for the kids to use in art class but I haven’t figured out what to do with the vinyl backing paper and application paper, apart the rubbish bin!
any ‘earth buddies’ with ideas please
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29 Replies
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Well I certainly do my bit when it comes to re-cycling. 😮
All the excess vinyl material left over after weeding is re-used by dissolving the material in a 50% hydrochloric acid solution (HN03) and used as a bio-diesel fuel substitute (if you want the recipe send me a PM 😉 ) – you have to declare this to HMC&E though and pay duty but it’s a small price to pay for saving the environment 😮
The ink that end up in the waste bottle on my solvent inkjet gets used as a weedkiller (excellent results – nothing grows again for about 5 years).
All the old signs I take down are saved up and dumped out in the countryside late at night – thereby avoiding filling up expensive landfill sites.
Old PC60s and PC600s are used as door stops.
Old used appication tape gets re-used as toilet paper (the glue tends to grab your bum hairs a bit though which can be a bit painfull 😕 ).
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quote Phill:Old used appication tape gets re-used as toilet paper (the glue tends to grab your bum hairs a bit though which can be a bit painfull 😕 ).wooow nice one phil………will get ed onto that right away…….save me a flippin fortune in bog roll!!! 😮
nik
(your mad) 😀
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Tongue in cheek – but after ‘Bliar’ 😉 seeking to tax the green issue…and as we already pay about 70% duty on fuel, a fossil fuel tax on our gas & electricity, vehicle excise duty for the priveledge of driving a car I’ll be burning all of my waste after dousing it in paint thinners and chucking on a few old tyres. I want my money’s worth!!
PVC etc – unless you recycle (surepticiously) in a plastics skip – you’ll be charged for it.
Paper – no money in recyled paper, and nobody wants silicon coated stuff – so you’re charged for collecting it.
Solvents – OK, you didn’t tip it down the sink….what now? The council doesn’t want to know – and the civic amenity won’t take them…So it’ll all end up in a land fill…the paper will degrade, and everything else can be dug up by Tony Robinson’s clone in the year 3006 ‘Time Team’ Millenium Special who’ll pass some insightfull remark… 🙄
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Hey, some great ideas guys………………we’re going to save a small fortune in loo rolls, and butt hair removal cream!
only problem running the car on vinyl bio fuel is will miss out on Tesco clubcard points, so won’t be doing that one.
so it’s just the vinyl backing paper we’ve got left to sort out 😛
oh and Dave, don’t burn the tyres – apart from the horrible smell and billowing smoke, which might be mistaken for a rouge group of Red Indians (smoke signals – the original idea for instant messaging) camped out in the neighbourhood, some gardener’s use them to grow spuds in!
🙂
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Neil, you seem quite environmentally conscious…and conscientious so you probably couldn’t picked a worse industry for generated wastage!! I reckon only about 25% of the vinyl application process results in a sign! The rest is weeded excess, application tape & backing paper so I appreciate your desire to do something about it.
No, I won’t really be burning anything so the Sioux invasion of Dundee is off…or wilfully polluting the planet (except with my overtaxed vehicle and desire to holiday abroad), but I’m at a loss too. It used to bother me and I looked for a secondary use for backing paper…just packaging. Like you, I sometimes donate (OK – offload) my offcuts to other parties, whether schools, charity groups or somebody that just fancies taking them off my hands so salve my conscience a teeny weeny bit, but some days the volume of crumpled up vinyl, tape & paper can beggar belief so sifting through it – or having dedicated bins is a non-starter.
As a side note, I only know one genuinely dedicated person who lives their life as ‘eco-friendly’ as humanly possible. I mean, bought little or no plastic containers, recycled all paper, re-used glass containers / recycled, composted all vegetable matter & ate organic local produce, cycled everywhere, designed, patented (and won awards for) fuel efficient vehicles, represented Britain at the Olympics (demo sport) – not your average guy..OK, he’s verging on the weird in some circles – (who else would cook sprouts for lunch in the back workshop of a bike shop….). Showed me what IS possible…so long as you’re capable of surviving without the need to manufacture anything for a living.
Dave
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All this save the planet from carbon makes me laugh, years ago the diesel engine was promoted by the gov as the way to go and diesel was cheaper than petrol, now its oh dont use diesel and we are going to stamp on you if you run a big 4x4mmmmm, i run 2 4x4s on pure veg oil 0% emissions do i get a tax break or anything NOT a Chance lol, the rest of my waste from the unit goes in a 45 gallon drum and i burn it, saves on land fill 😛 enviromentally friendly, proberly not, but i live on a farm miles from anywhere, no mains gas/water/sewage/electric so im proberly saving from all that mains stuff anyway, self sufficient 😀
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Dave,
Your right – sign making is probably one of the worst industries for waste, when as you say a huge amount of vinyl is binned rather than ending up on the finished product, and of course when your busy, it’s easier just to chuck it away. So there isn’t much to be done about all the application paper and vinyl off-cuts, unless we all go back to sign-writing!
I think you can have a healthy environmentally conscious attitude without being too extreme – wouldn’t say I was an Eco-warrior or tree hugger but just like do a bit more, whether it’s recycling or biking to work. One day our kids or their kids will have to sort out whatever mess we leave behind – we can all make a difference if we choose too. 🙂
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Apparently the UK emits 2% of the world’s pollution which is affecting the planet. This means that if we stop polluting completely, which of course is not realistic, the best we could contribute is 2%. In practical terms we could probably save less than .5%. This has no significance in world terms particularly as the far more sigiificant levels from China, USA and Russia continue to increase.
Therefore I have decided not to bust a gut, raise my costs or lower my quality of life and will leave it to the inventiveness of my Grandchildren to sort the problem!!
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lol peter !!
i recycle what i can, but not in the true sense, i minimise my waste by giving my kids schools all the vinyl offcuts too small, creased, or otherwise damaged, they love it in the art dept’s, even chunks of foamex goes down well in sensible sizes !
the paper is used for packing, wrapping parcels, etc, ultimately i burn it if i cant lose it quick enough,
the waste vinyl just gets binned, about half a wheelie bin a week i guess (when compacted by kids !), blades get stored up until i have enough, i then plan to drop em into the docs or chemist for proper disposal,
i dont have bother with fluids or solvents as i dont use em,
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quote :Therefore I have decided not to bust a gut, raise my costs or lower my quality of life and will leave it to the inventiveness of my Grandchildren to sort the problem!!
Your having a laugh………… :lol1:
It’ll be too late to for our Grandchildren to do anything about it by then. -
its really ironic, over the last 2 hundred years, we in the UK have been extracting minerals from the landscape, most to built with or burn. The goverment tell us we have no room for landfill, yeah right, viewed from the air, the uk is like a swiss cheese, so why not fill the holes first, then think about expensive re-cycling.
Peter
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I couldn’t agree more Peter.
Why not fill up all the redundant coal mine shafts and open cast mines with landfill. Ashes to ashes – dust to dust. Nature takes care of rubbish always has done and always will.
The truth is landfill is not a problem – it’s just another excuse to raise taxes.
We are being brainwashed to accept that recycling and pollution is a problem when in fact it isn’t for the people in Britain. Britain isn’t causing global warming – and I doubt that mankind is either.
On the news tonight I hear that the sea will run out of fish by the year 2050 – What a load of bollocks!! We are constantly bombarded with "green" propaganda and lies to the extent that we end up believing it.
Cars now are more fuel efficient then they were 20 years ago. Back in the seventies a typical family car would achieve 25 mpg – Nowadays it’s more like 40mpg (almost double) – so presumably we can have twice as many cars on the road as we did in the 70’s with no more pollution or waste of resources than we did back then – yet we pay a much higher fuel tax!!
I’ve not long returned from a holiday abroad and I still can’t believe how cheap it is to buy petrol abroad compared to here (hot)
Us poor brits are victims of the all the propaganda poured out by our politicians, papers and opinion formers. We are slap bang in the middle of a propaganda war in which the British people are being brainwashed to believe in a problem that is not of our making in the belief that this will condition us to accept yet more indirect taxation to fund the massive bureaucracy that Britain PLC has become
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quote :I’ve not long returned from a holiday abroad and I still can’t believe how cheap it is to buy petrol abroad compared to here (hot)
Us poor brits are victims of the all the propaganda poured out by our politicians, papers and opinion formers. We are slap bang in the middle of a propaganda war in which the British people are being brainwashed to believe in a problem that is not of our making in the belief that this will condition us to accept yet more indirect taxation to fund the massive bureaucracy that Britain PLC has become
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I think some of us Brits should go and live abroad for a year or two so they can see how much tax they would pay and what services they get for their money. Not every country has the high standards we have in the UK and how many countries have anything that’s close to the NHS.
In North America I found that I needed a work permit in every City (town) before I was allowed to install signs there. Imagine having to pay every UK council for an annual permit for every different council area that you wanted to operate in – would make a big dent in your profits!
As for the fuel, the locals were pretty pi**** off when the price got to over $1 per litre, and wouldn’t believe that in the UK it was closer to $2.20 p/litre. I think it’s all relative really because Brits can earn so much more money – ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it’
Oh – and filling in holes/mines with rubbish rather that recycling.
I think that’s putting the problem on to our kids to deal with, and let’s be honest would you want all that rubbish buried near where you live. 🙂 -
I like recycling, I do all the paper and card, materials, plastics, glass, wood, grass/garden clippings, metals …. whatever we can. I think its good to at least do something, I used to hate throwing away so much waste. Its so easy to recylce too.
The problems we have with work waste is the backing paper, tacking tape and the weeded vinyl ….. still not found a use for these yet?
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quote Neil Churchman:I think some of us Brits should go and live abroad for a year or two so they can see how much tax they would pay and what services they get for their money. Not every country has the high standards we have in the UK and how many countries have anything that’s close to the NHS.
My wife’s Canadian, and most of the comapnies she’s worked for have health plans / insurance – you pay a nominal fee when you need it, or half of a ‘complimentary medicine’. Their health care system is excellent when you pay insurance…REALLY sucks if you can’t afford $50 or £60 a month though…
quote :……….As for the fuel, the locals were pretty pi**** off when the price got to over $1 per litre, and wouldn’t believe that in the UK it was closer to $2.20 p/litre. I think it’s all relative really because Brits can earn so much more money – ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it’Agreed, they think you’re joking that it costs $150 to fill up your car. As for us having higher wages…it’s a relative notion!! Their minimum wages truely suck, but after that you are reasonably well paid for the job you do. But our food, services, luxuries, vehicles, taxes are ALL much, much more expensive so it just offsets the wages – fine if you’re on holiday there, then WE see the benefit – they are appalled at the cost of EVERYTHING here!! We pay in pounds what they pay in dollars!
quote :Oh – and filling in holes/mines with rubbish rather that recycling.
I think that’s putting the problem on to our kids to deal with, and let’s be honest would you want all that rubbish buried near where you live.. 🙂It’s gotta go SOMEWHERE!! Nothing quite like sweeping it under the carpet!
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Hi Dave,
The Canadians basic health service seemed OK – they had plenty of complaints too about being under funded, and the staff were regularly out on strike over pay and conditions. Dental care was mega bucks unless you were fortunate enough to work for a company with a health plan.
We were always warned not to go to the US without good medical cover though, otherwise you ‘loose your shirt’ with the high medical costs.
Can’t say that we found the food that much cheaper though – milk, cheese and bread all much higher prices than Tesco’s, and we found the utilities and local taxes just as high if not higher than the UK. – Eating out was reasonable though.
Canada – great country to visit for a holiday!
😀
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Yeh, been there more times than I care to think about…but enjoyed them…even when immigration grilled me in their special area for the illegals, drug dealers & would-be-assylum-seekers… 😳
"When were you last here sir (knowing full well as she’s got my passport)"
"About 3 months back..I’m getting married this Saturday"
..handed important looking form.."through the door on your left sir"
then followed a nervous half hour.
"Why are you here" I’m getting married
"can I see the invitation"..it’s my wedding, I don’t have an invitation
"who are you marrying, can we contact her" em, sorry I don’t have an address or a phone number..she’s left her appartment & staying with her friend this week…she’s in the arrivals lounge though. (Not what she wanted to hear)
I have the rings here, do you want to see them? "Yes.. inpects them for shinyness"
…and so it went on for another 15 minutes – giving all sorts of dumb details…if only I’d kept me trap shut! 🙄Hate the touristy stuff, but you gotta jump on the glass in the CN & wander around Niagra ‘cos you’re there.
You’re right , the essential food groceries were about on a par with here cost wise – just most of the things that we take for granted but are imported from overseas is cheaper there. (Lots of their fruit & veg just comes up from the states). But eating out is great – twice the size for half the cost…service NEARLY always impecable.
Back to subject of recycling – Toronto had a bit of a fiasco with some of their environmental garbage separation – everybody given different trash cans / boxes for different products – all picked up separately & fines issued for non-compliance…all ended up at the same landfill site.
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quote David Rogers:Yeh, been there more times than I care to think about…but enjoyed them…even when immigration grilled me in their special area for the illegals, drug dealers & would-be-assylum-seekers… 😳
“When were you last here sir (knowing full well as she’s got my passport)”
“About 3 months back..I’m getting married this Saturday”
..handed important looking form..”through the door on your left sir”
then followed a nervous half hour.
“Why are you here” I’m getting married
“can I see the invitation”..it’s my wedding, I don’t have an invitation
🙄:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
sounds familiar – the canuck immigration dept. are almost as paranoid as the US immigration dept.
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quote :[quote=
Back to subject of recycling – Toronto had a bit of a fiasco with some of their environmental garbage separation – everybody given different trash cans / boxes for different products – all picked up separately & fines issued for non-compliance…all ended up at the same landfill site.
[/quote]
Sounds about the same for Vancouver, pretty good at collecting the stuff for recycling , although not sure about if it ends up in landfill or not.
What was funny – you could leave an old sofa (that you’d probably want to take to the dump) outside your house on the sidewalk with a hand painted sign saying FREE, and within the hour someone with a pick-up would come by and take it.
The guy opposite me had seven 50 foot trees cut down from his front yard, and they chopped up the trunk into pieces, left if outside his house, and with a couple of days the whole lot was gone – now that’s what I call recycling!
😀
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Flew into Winnipeg last Christmas on the way to Virden to see friends.
Both me and my mate got pulled into the customs room..no one else did. Maybe it’s because we’re from Northern Ireland :lol1:
Although the fact I had been chucking up since I left London and looked like crap might have had something to do with it. Apparently they have a policy of looking out for people who look flustered or slightly haggered :lol1:
They went through EVERYTHING in our luggage and tried prising our phones apart. They were very suspicious of the 2 of us having the same mobile phone. I suppose they are used to 2 tin cans and a piece of string :lol1:
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fascinating thread…
So what do we do with backing? do we call Avery etc and ask them?
One of my collegues has been spending some time to find a better solution for our land fillup, however my household recycling seems so low considering what happens in the business waste.
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fly tip,
it works out cheaper than being responsible
peter
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so thats what you do with your pilots license.. good plan
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all our backing paper and other waste, is used to wrap and pack our retail signs, so passing on the recycling problem to someone else 😀
Peter
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quote Peter Normington:all our backing paper and other waste, is used to wrap and pack our retail signs, so passing on the recycling problem to someone else 😀
Peter
Peter,
I would like to think that although you are passing on your waste to someone else, at least you haven’t gone out and bought a roll of bubble wrap to send your sign product, and buy re-using the backing paper, you have halved the amount of waste that may have otherwise been created.
😀
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quote Peter Normington:all our backing paper and other waste, is used to wrap and pack our retail signs, so passing on the recycling problem to someone else 😀
Peter
i tend to do that, or burn it if i run out of storage space, seems better than binning it,
re the coal mines idea etc, i wouldnt fill em in, we still have some of the most productive (potentially) coal deposits in the world, the way i understand it (after chatting to an ex rhondda miner)some years back) is that we’re buying all the cheap nasty coal from germany, and other places in europe, and keep all the good welsh coal for when their stuff runs out, selling back to europe at huge prices cos it’s the best black stuff in the world ! !
well… after guiness that is !
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I was bag packing at Asda a couple of weekends ago to help raise funds for my sons football team.
One fella wouldn’t let us pack his shopping – he proudly produced his own canvas shopping bag that he had brought with him, announced that he was saving the planet and proceeded to pack it himself…
…daft bugger 🙄
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:lol1: we use the big tesco bags that you can buy when we do our big shop instead of using plastic carrier bags ….. you get more in them, the handles dont snap and the sides dont split … I feel better about not using the carrier bags 😛 Then every now and then the plastic carrier bags that we have accumulated I take back and post in the return box thingy they have.
Yoghurt pots, bottle lids, and quite a few other bits and bobs we send over the nursery for the kids … they build models etc out of them.
Business waste … the backing paper is the main pain in the butt.
😀
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Just heard an interesting feature on recycling and how the councils deal with our recycling waste.
The feature was on the Jeremy Vine show – BBC Radio 2
They mentioned a website if anyone would like more information about recycling
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