January 28, 20251 yr Which is odd. If I had a big enough bin it wouldn't matter whether recycling was collected weekly, monthly, quarterly or even annually. On the other hand general waste including food waste needs to be collected relatively frequently for hygiene reasons. I don't see how it can be safe for organic waste to only be collected once a month. Your well behaved approach is unfortunately not typical. Given a big landfill bin collected weekly, a surprising proportion of our fellow citizens will only recycle to the extent necessary to avoid filling the landfill bin before collection day. Sad, but true. The frequent collections of recycling, on the other hand, give confidence that space will never be an issue for effective recyclers. My direct experience regarding food waste is that a food waste separate collection went hand in hand with the extended black bin collection interval, so that there was no reason for organic matter to end up in landfill - which is another aim: to reduce landfill gas emissions. There are special cases, and I don't have direct experience of these: for example disposable nappies.
January 28, 20251 yr I agree with you Nigel. These cut backs are I think more likely driven by attempts to keep money they collected from the residents and use it for other purposes than the residents want and need. Local councils in the UK have become far too powerful and forget that they are there to serve the public rather than to promote their own political and social objectives. They are absolutely immune to criticism - rather like the BBC. They are always right, and the local government ombudsman is a joke. Local councils are primarily the bin men and road repair people - neither of which functions they want to perform these days, preferring a whole list of woke garbage instead. I remember holidays in Paris in the 1970s and 1980s when I stayed with my brother who has lived there since 1975, where each early morning we woke to the sound of bin men emptying the poubelles. There were I recall strict regulations about not putting bins in the street except at the correct time. Last time I was in London the streets were lined by horrible piles of plastic bags, often ripped open by foxes and stray cats. The stink was abominable. In Newcastle we had stout plastic wheelie bins from about the end of the eighties and we had weekly collections. Now the collections are fortnightly, which is FAR too infrequent - in summer, even an enclosed bin smells if there is organic matter in it. The move to disposable nappies is an additional issue. God knows what that would smell like after a month during summer! Service provision is driven more by lack of money up against legal requirements. Social care dominates, not bins and roads. https://www.lgcplus.com/finance/social-care-spend-tops-four-fifths-of-budgets-23-01-2025/
January 28, 20251 yr I agree with you Nigel. These cut backs are I think more likely driven by attempts to keep money they collected from the residents and use it for other purposes than the residents want and need. Local councils in the UK have become far too powerful and forget that they are there to serve the public rather than to promote their own political and social objectives. They are absolutely immune to criticism - rather like the BBC. They are always right, and the local government ombudsman is a joke. Local councils are primarily the bin men and road repair people - neither of which functions they want to perform these days, preferring a whole list of woke garbage instead. Your idea of what councils do is completely misplaced. The biggest single demand on council spending are statutory obligations for adult social care followed by education, children’s social care & safeguarding. My local council (Essex) has to spend nearly every penny raised by council tax on adult social care. Local councils have suffered massive reductions in funding since 2010 especially funding from central government. English councils’ funding for FY 2024–25 will be 9% lower in real terms than in 2010–11 which is equivalent to a cut of 18% per resident given substantial population growth over the last 14 years. Anything that is not a statutory obligation is bound to have a lower priority. This includes not only roads & bins but libraries, sports centres, public health etc
January 28, 20251 yr Our household has two rwatse bins 120L the smaller size ones . Recycling is fortnightly and the bin is always nearly full, the waste bin is never very full at most there will be two supermarket earket carrier bags of waste. Food waste and meat joints are left for the fox to nouish herself and her new born , compostable waste goes in the garden composter.
January 28, 20251 yr Lydian can make aviation fuel wherever there’s CO2 and electricity "The pilot plant is capable of producing up to 25 gallons of fuel per day using a process that combines captured CO2, water, and renewable electricity. This process results in a drop-in alternative for conventional jet fuel, slashing emissions by up to 95%, according to the company." https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/27/lydian-labs-can-make-aviation-fuel-wherever-theres-co2-and-electricity/ https://www.airport-technology.com/news/lydian-pilot-demonstration-saf-technology/
January 28, 20251 yr Lydian can make aviation fuel wherever there’s CO2 and electricity "The pilot plant is capable of producing up to 25 gallons of fuel per day using a process that combines captured CO2, water, and renewable electricity. This process results in a drop-in alternative for conventional jet fuel, slashing emissions by up to 95%, according to the company." https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/27/lydian-labs-can-make-aviation-fuel-wherever-theres-co2-and-electricity/ https://www.airport-technology.com/news/lydian-pilot-demonstration-saf-technology/ So let's just think about this. The plant can make 25 gallons of jet fuel a day. An A380 burns 4600 gallons an hour, so that plant will need 184 days of working to run an A380 for ONE HOUR. Here is a screen shot from flightradar 24 showing planes crossing the Atlantic right now 2204GMT on Monday 28th Jan. Yeah - right. This is going to make a big difference.....
January 29, 20251 yr https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/01/23/activists-guide-securing-your-smartphone/#use-a-strong-screen-lock
January 29, 20251 yr Climate triple whammy boosted risk of LA fires, study shows https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/28/climate-triple-whammy-boosted-risk-of-la-fires-study-shows
January 29, 20251 yr Astronomers just deleted an asteroid because it turned out to be Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster https://www.astronomy.com/science/astronomers-just-deleted-an-asteroid-because-it-turned-out-to-be-elon-musks-tesla-roadster/
January 29, 20251 yr Nvidia’s $589 Billion DeepSeek Rout Is Largest in Market History https://finance.yahoo.com/news/asml-sinks-china-ai-startup-081823609.html
January 29, 20251 yr Caltrain’s Electric Fleet More Efficient than Expected Caltrain announced at its monthly Board of Directors meeting that regenerative braking on the new trains is generating and sending back to the electric grid approximately 23% of the energy consumed by the system. The new electric trains are outperforming Caltrain’s original projections, which is welcome news for a public agency that holds sustainability as a core value. https://www.caltrain.com/news/caltrains-electric-fleet-more-efficient-expected
January 29, 20251 yr Boom: America’s answer to Concorde completes its first supersonic flight https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/28/travel/boom-supersonic-first-flight-break-sound-barrier-mach-1/index.html
January 29, 20251 yr Norway is set to become the first country to fully transition to electric vehicles https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/28/norway-set-to-be-the-first-to-fully-transition-to-electric-vehicles.html
January 29, 20251 yr https://electrek.co/2025/01/27/hd-hyundai-set-to-debut-production-14-ton-hydrogen-wheeled-excavator/
January 29, 20251 yr Wall Street Enters Darker Age With Most Stock Trading Hidde "For the first time on record, the majority of all trading in US stocks is now consistently occurring outside the country’s exchanges, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. This off-exchange activity — which happens internally at major firms or in alternative platforms known as dark pools — is on course to account for a record 51.8% of traded volume in January. " https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-enters-darker-age-110003632.html
January 29, 20251 yr Proper decoupling practices, and why you should leave 100nF behind https://codeinsecurity.wordpress.com/2025/01/25/proper-decoupling-practices-and-why-you-should-leave-100nf-behind/
January 29, 20251 yr [in-depth] Behind DeepSeek's Success: A Profile of China's Most Technical AI Company https://xyzlabs.substack.com/p/in-depth-behind-deepseeks-success
January 29, 20251 yr How good old mud can lower building costs Builders pour concrete into temporary molds called formwork. MIT researchers invented a way to make these structures out of on-site soil. https://news.mit.edu/2025/how-good-old-mud-can-lower-building-costs-0124
January 29, 20251 yr How a dose of MDMA transformed a white supremacist https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230614-how-a-dose-of-mdma-transformed-a-white-supremacist
January 29, 20251 yr The next world’s tallest building could be a 3,000-feet-high battery https://edition.cnn.com/style/skyscraper-batteries-som-energy-vault-spc/index.html
January 29, 20251 yr https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Einstein_Probe_detects_puzzling_cosmic_explosion
January 29, 20251 yr Knowing less about AI makes people more open to having it in their lives – new research https://theconversation.com/knowing-less-about-ai-makes-people-more-open-to-having-it-in-their-lives-new-research-247372
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