Pedants' Paradise

[LMcD]

Here food and recyclables are collected every week. Black rubbish bins once a fortnight - which I think is a good thing. People should be encouraged to reduce the amount of stuff that goes into landfill or - worse in some ways - is incinerated. And I say unto you: reduce, reuse, recycle. And the greatest of these is ... reduce :-)

On occasions there's so little in my grey bin that I wait another fortnight before putting it out.

[french frank]

On occasions there's so little in my grey bin that I wait another fortnight before putting it out.

Me too - I have the smaller size of bin and sometimes can go for six weeks before I put it out. But as it's near the front gate one of the men often will come and peer into it, and will take the odd bag out. And leave the gate wide open - but I forgive them

[oddoneout]

Here food and recyclables are collected every week. Black rubbish bins once a fortnight - which I think is a good thing. People should be encouraged to reduce the amount of stuff that goes into landfill or - worse in some ways - is incinerated. And I say unto you: reduce, reuse, recycle. And the greatest of these is ... reduce :-)

A very early cotton shopping bag that our local council handed out had "reject, reduce, reuse, repair, recycle" printed on it. Once targets came in for council recycling levels the prevention stages went out the window as it was all about maxing the recycling rates. As one city council(which hadn't met its recycling targets) pointed out that meant that if they managed to significantly reduce the amount going to landfill in the first place by preventing it being created or thrown away, that would be penalised as it would reduce the recycling rate...

[smittims]

Here we've been amazed (dismayed?) at the number of people who drive here to dump large bags of household rubbish in the street litter bins across the road. Have they no wheelie bins? Or do they create so much rubbish that their bin would overflow? It's a mystery.

[french frank]

if they managed to significantly reduce the amount going to landfill in the first place by preventing it being created or thrown away, that would be penalised as it would reduce the recycling rate...

That's ignoring the major point of the exercise which is to reduce consumption of everything, recyclable or not. That would mean considering reduction in landfill alongside recycling rates.

[oddoneout]

That's ignoring the major point of the exercise which is to reduce consumption of everything, recyclable or not. That would mean considering reduction in landfill alongside recycling rates.

Indeed, but that's not how the set-up works - or at least that used to be the case. Perhaps now someone has seen the light and councils are also given credit for reducing waste to landfill, but I rather doubt it. I haven't looked into that having got so dispirited with decades long arguments with the council about its approach to waste disposal.
The whole thing is a mess nationally, particularly the piecemeal approach that means households on different sides of a boundary(so can be almost next door) can have very different set-ups for their waste collection, depending on which companies the local council has decided to go with and how far they want(or are able these cash strapped days) to pursue landfill reduction. In my council area we have one general "recyclables" bin into which everything on the council's recyclable list (which will vary according to which council area you are in) goes(which must result in a high rate of contamination and therefore rejection), which then goes to a central sorting facility which also deals with other, neighbouring, councils' better segregated rubbish. Whether the "percentage recycled this month" figures are accurate I don't know - I suspect not as I would imagine it's just the figure for the amount sent for sorting, not the amount that can be, or actually is,recycled.
The lack of consistency is not conducive to encouraging compliance; even those fully behind the cause get dispirited by the anomalies( those moving from elsewhere, even within the same county, can find the differences puzzling) and also the changing decisions about what can be recycled. That aspect is particularly tiresome if one visits the tip as things seem to change from month to month - annoying if items are taken on the basis of what was OK on a previous recent visit.

[vinteuil]

.

... still on recycling - and also perhaps a pedantic point : I am irritated by the ambiguity on the information leaflets provided by the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham regarding what can be recycled. Their repeated strapline is -

"If in doubt, leave it out"

Does this mean, "exclude it" - or "leave it out" for the dustmen to collect?
(Of course I know what is meant, but there's nothing like an ambiguity to get me riled... )

.

[AuntDaisy]

.

... still on recycling - and also perhaps a pedantic point : I am irritated by the ambiguity on the information leaflets provided by the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham regarding what can be recycled. Their repeated strapline is -

"If in doubt, leave it out"

Does this mean, "exclude it" - or "leave it out" for the dustmen to collect?
(Of course I know what is meant, but there's nothing like an ambiguity to get me riled... )

.

See it, say it, sort it... *

[kernelbogey]

See it, say it, sort it... *

'If you see something that doesn't look right in someone's recycling bin, call British Recycling Police on..."

[AuntDaisy]

'If you see something that doesn't look right in someone's recycling bin, call British Recycling Police on..."

[Pulcinella]

Not sure that this is the right thread, as it's possibly just a phrase that's unfamiliar to me, but what on earth does 'failing forward' (I don't think that it's a Grauniad typo) mean?

Harris, Michelle Obama said, “understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top.”

[oddoneout]

[QUOTE=Pulcinella;n1315688]Not sure that this is the right thread, as it's possibly just a phrase that's unfamiliar to me, but what on earth does 'failing forward' (I don't think that it's a Grauniad typo) mean?

Harris, Michelle Obama said, “understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top.”[/QUOTE]

I'm not familiar with that one - but failing upwards is pretty common, and the phenomenon to which it refers has been around for heaven knows how long, although previous descriptions were of the "promoted out of harm's way" type?

[LMcD]

[QUOTE=oddoneout;n1315689]

Not sure that this is the right thread, as it's possibly just a phrase that's unfamiliar to me, but what on earth does 'failing forward' (I don't think that it's a Grauniad typo) mean?



I'm not familiar with that one - but failing upwards is pretty common, and the phenomenon to which it refers has been around for heaven knows how long, although previous descriptions were of the "promoted out of harm's way" type?

Apparently to 'fall forward' is to embrace failure and profit from one's mistakes. This is very confusing to somebody who remembers to change the clocks twice a year on the basis of 'Spring forward, fall back'.

[french frank]

I found this quote online: "Winston Churchill once said, “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” This quote perfectly encapsulates the idea of failing forward, ..."

So learning lessons from your failure, which ties in with the quote from the Guardian about people not getting second chances, never the opportunity to 'fail forward'.

[Pulcinella]

Thanks all.
Not sure why my original quoted layout didn't work: amended now.
Maybe the quotation marks themselves interfered with the quote command!