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FLYTIPPING


Maffi

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32 minutes ago, David Mack said:

So what do the steam railways do with their ash now?

 

Waste disposal is usually entrusted to specialist contractors - steam railway operation in the 21st Century is a very expensive business.

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1 hour ago, NB Alnwick said:

As has been written in other topics, times and attitudes change with education and knowledge!

All ash is now classed as toxic waste and therefore must be disposed of in a responsible manner.

It was different years ago: When I took over the management of the Great Central Railway in the 1990s, a British Waterways lorry collected all the ash produced by our steam locomotives. I understood that the fine ash was used for sealing lock gates and the cinder ash was used for making paths - applications that had been in use for centuries. The collections stopped when the Environment Agency intervened - the evidence supporting that decision was very convincing.

We live and learn - tradition is commendable but there are many historical practices that are no longer appropriate in the light of knowledge and understanding.

These days our canal towpaths are a disgrace. Not just because of the piles of toxic waste accumulating under the hedges but also because of other detritus that some boaters insist that they need to pile up near their boats.

As responsible and caring users of the canal network we should do our best to protect it.

Well Said Maffi!

I'm sure that I've seen you using cinders to fill depressions in the local towpath. I always thought that doing this was a Good Thing.

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21 minutes ago, Athy said:

I'm sure that I've seen you using cinders to fill depressions in the local towpath. I always thought that doing this was a Good Thing.

True and we also thought it a good thing based on years of traditional practice. Cinder paths were once commonplace in the steam railway era partially because they were readily available and worked as an effective weed deterrent..

That said, I have never dumped ash in a hedge or on vegetation. And, for the last five years have used an ash bucket to make sure that our ash is disposed legally.

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6 hours ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

Compared to the real issue of fly tipping (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/24/waste-dumping-uk-environment) a few Kgs of ash is a bit of a minor issue.

Maybe we should all throw a couple of empty beer cans out as well, what difference will another couple of cans make or pump our toilets into the canal, its nothing compared with what the water companies do.

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On 13/11/2021 at 22:36, Mikexx said:

 

I'm hardly a grasshoppper,

  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-in-soil/

 

Suggests fly ash is used for crops. Most artiucle I have seen say:

1) The soil already contains traces of the same contamiments and contaminents of fly ash is of a low level

2) If you are worried, then use on soil being used for ornamental plants and other non food plants

3) Use instead of salt / rock salt on frosty paths

 

Given I don't snort any form of ash I don't suffer any of these ailments. In fact you're far more likely to suffer these if you over indulge.

 

The article you reference  expresses concerns about the use of fly as an agricultural soil conditioner due to toxins. There are much better uses for fly ash . The best being as a cement substitute. 

1 hour ago, NB Alnwick said:

Cinder paths were once commonplace in the steam railway era partially because they were readily available and worked as an effective weed deterrent..

 

Because of the toxins.

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On 13/11/2021 at 21:28, Wanderer Vagabond said:

It was a rhetorical question since I'm obviously not going to dump it, but it is getting increasing difficult to get into more and more recycling centres. Leaving a scrap microwave in a spare room at my postal address isn't quite the same problem as having to work around one on the floor of the saloon on the boat. Even the recycling centre at my postal address you have to book a slot and give the car registration of the vehicle you will be bringing the recycling in, not much help when you don't have a car, pedestrian access is not allowed.

 

I do understand the financial pressures that Local Authorities are under but looking at how much fly tipping is becoming visible it seems that the unintended consequences of excluding people from their recycling centres seems to mean that people then dump stuff elsewhere. I have passed a fridge dumped on the towpath in the middle of nowhere, it had to have come from a boater since there were no roads nearby. Often I will collect rubbish that I come across on my travels and dispose of it at a CRT waste site, but if I'd collected up the fridge, what was I supposed to do with it?

Years ago I was a member of my local council. The free collection of dead white goods was stopped as a cost cutting measure and I pointed out that this would encourage fly tipping. The response was, fine! Collection would cost money but fly tipping was collected by a firm contracted for the purpose at no extra cost per item. 

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59 minutes ago, Sir Nibble said:

Years ago I was a member of my local council. The free collection of dead white goods was stopped as a cost cutting measure and I pointed out that this would encourage fly tipping. The response was, fine! Collection would cost money but fly tipping was collected by a firm contracted for the purpose at no extra cost per item. 

Until contract renewal, at which time the price goes up to reflect the extra work!

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9 hours ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

Compared to the real issue of fly tipping (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/24/waste-dumping-uk-environment) a few Kgs of ash is a bit of a minor issue.

Our local coal boat delivers about 11 tons of smokeless fuel every three weeks in the winter. There are about 17 or 18 coal boats. So a ballpark figure could be nearly 200 tons every three weeks. I dont know the ratio of coal to ash in a ton but assuming its a 1/4 that's around 50 tones every three weeks. 350 tons over heating season is not a few Kgs. Even if it only 1/10 that's still 140 tons.

 

I look at the tow path more than most when I am on a litter picking mission and see many barren patches of tow path caused by dumping ash on the grass. These areas can be barren for 2 or 3 years. Something is killing the Flora. And who hasn't seen burnt stretches of hedgerow. From a boaters point of view it is a big issue. What is wrong with bagging it and binning it? Is it so hard!

Edited by Maffi
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5 hours ago, Athy said:

I'm sure that I've seen you using cinders to fill depressions in the local towpath. I always thought that doing this was a Good Thing.

Surely Athy if anyone is spreading 'cinders' on the towpath then they haven't burned their fuel correctly and the toxin level in those 'cinders is high?

 

 

When I first started on my anti-littering campaign 10 years ago it soon occurred to me that many people had no idea how to run their stove. This was so apparent that as well as a plastic bag (for litter) I would carry a bucket and a seive. A good days litter picking would also get me a bucket, sometimes two of unburned coals. I once found a pile of ash 2 feet high beside a boat whose owner told me that he was born on a boat and knew "all there was to know about fires". He told me that the lumps were the bits that would not burn, which he added to the pile every morning. From that one pile (with his permission) I took two buckets of unburnt coals that lasted me three days. I recently re-visted the area and that pile as I passed this year and evidence of that pile was still there 6/7 years later no grass in it at all. Ash poisons the ground it sits on.

1 hour ago, David Mack said:

But isn't that what the toilet composters say?

Half composted sewage is not compost, It's a different class of waste altogether!

Edited by Maffi
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11 hours ago, john.k said:

Fly ash is chemically identically to grate ash. To burn coal in a huge boiler, it is ground to powder and blown into the furnaces by steam or compressed air the powder coal burns to ash in the furnace ,and is exhausted via a separator. Fly ash is akin to cement ,and is a valuable additive to concrete. When the carbonaceous material is burnt out of coal, what's left is a baked shale, dried clay. The harmful materials in coal such as tar, arsenic, phenol, aromatics, etc either burn or go up the flue and are either exhausted into the open air or in the case of arsenic and tar, condense in the flue. Consequently, the harmful material from a coal fire is not the ash, but the smoke, so you saturate the countryside with harmful particulates and gases, and worry about the disposal of a bit of hard dirt.

I disagree you cannot compare a professionally run furnace to a poxy Villager stove on a narrow boat run buy some moron who thinks operating a retractable ballpoint pen makes him an engineer. I would argue that most boaters do not urn their fires hot enough to turn good coal into non-toxic shale.

 

Come up with a way of collecting the particles from my smokeless chimney and we can talk.

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3 hours ago, Maffi said:

Our local coal boat delivers about 11 tons of smokeless fuel every three weeks in the winter. There are about 17 or 18 coal boats. So a ballpark figure could be nearly 200 tons every three weeks. I dont know the ratio of coal to ash in a ton but assuming its a 1/4 that's around 50 tones every three weeks. 350 tons over heating season is not a few Kgs. Even if it only 1/10 that's still 140 tons.

 

I look at the tow path more than most when I am on a litter picking mission and see many barren patches of tow path caused by dumping ash on the grass. These areas can be barren for 2 or 3 years. Something is killing the Flora. And who hasn't seen burnt stretches of hedgerow. From a boaters point of view it is a big issue. What is wrong with bagging it and binning it? Is it so hard!

Starting from the position that I do indeed bag and bin the ash from my fire as you suggest, but it doesn't prevent me from seeing just how illogical it all is.

 

To begin with, what is causing the greatest damage, burning the coal in the first place? or dumping the ash in a hedge? A 20Kg bag of coal will generate 42Kg of CO2 when burnt and 4.5 Kg of ash, on a global scale which is the greater problem? Just because you cannot see the 42Kg of CO2 doesn't lessen the problem that it is causing.

 

Moving onto the disposal, the plastic bags that you are putting the ash into are just going into landfill, you cannot burn the plastic bag in a combined heat and waste unit (since the ash in it will prevent it) nor can you recycle it, so instead of being on the ground under a hedge, it is being buried in the ground somewhere else in a plastic bag (I'll come back to that later), other that the aesthetics, where lies the difference? It would be far more useful if we could find a practical purpose to use the waste ash for without putting it into plastic bags and burying it. Whilst I would accept that the ash may well kill the fauna on the towpath, you are looking at a 3 metre ribbon of land that was intended for walking on (with horses) so it could be argued that it will save CRT money on the Fountains contract for cutting the grass;).

 

On the other hand, the industrial amounts of waste that are now being dumped by illicit, commercial fly-tippers as referenced in the earlier post (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/24/waste-dumping-uk-environment) make the small amounts that some boaters dump look beyond trivial (yes, I've also had to put out hedge fires caused by it, but it's not as though there isn't an abundance of nearby water to deal with it). When we start hitting these commercial fly tippers with meaningful financial penalties, I would suggest something of the order of £20 per kilo of dumped waste (£1000/50Kg) with 10% of the fine going to anyone who reports them leading to a conviction, this might lead to a reduction in offending. I've just travelled into Birmingham on the New Main Line and by one of the bridges there has been dumped a whole load of builders waste including a large corner bath (look out for it, it'll probably be a feature there for some considerable time). This hasn't fallen from the sky, or even come out of the back of someone's car, a substantial sized van has been used to dump it. When those who are responsible for this vandalism are dealt with,then I'll start to get excited about some ash in a hedge.

 

I'm not condoning those who do dump such ash, but in proportion to the main fly tipping, it is indeed trivial.

 

Regarding the plastic bags mentioned earlier, isn't it also somewhat ridiculous the manner in which we deal with dog waste? We have something that naturally decomposes that we now get people to seal up in a plastic bag which will then also go to landfill where the plastic bag itself will last for decades, if not longer.. Wouldn't it be better if people used compostable starch bags to put the dog waste into some form of composter (that is of course disregarding those who hang the bags on trees for collection by the dog sh*t fairy:sick:

Edited by Wanderer Vagabond
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4 hours ago, Sir Nibble said:

Years ago I was a member of my local council. The free collection of dead white goods was stopped as a cost cutting measure and I pointed out that this would encourage fly tipping. The response was, fine! Collection would cost money but fly tipping was collected by a firm contracted for the purpose at no extra cost per item. 

Your assessment of the outcome of the 'cost cutting exercise' seems to be spot on. My understanding however is that when the significant amounts of waste fly tipped onto farmer's land is removed, it is at the farmer's expense, is that incorrect?

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40 minutes ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

Starting from the position that I do indeed bag and bin the ash from my fire as you suggest, but it doesn't prevent me from seeing just how illogical it all is.

 

To begin with, what is causing the greatest damage, burning the coal in the first place? or dumping the ash in a hedge? A 20Kg bag of coal will generate 42Kg of CO2 when burnt and 4.5 Kg of ash, on a global scale which is the greater problem? Just because you cannot see the 42Kg of CO2 doesn't lessen the problem that it is causing.

 

Moving onto the disposal, the plastic bags that you are putting the ash into are just going into landfill, you cannot burn the plastic bag in a combined heat and waste unit (since the ash in it will prevent it) nor can you recycle it, so instead of being on the ground under a hedge, it is being buried in the ground somewhere else in a plastic bag (I'll come back to that later), other that the aesthetics, where lies the difference? It would be far more useful if we could find a practical purpose to use the waste ash for without putting it into plastic bags and burying it. Whilst I would accept that the ash may well kill the fauna on the towpath, you are looking at a 3 metre ribbon of land that was intended for walking on (with horses) so it could be argued that it will save CRT money on the Fountains contract for cutting the grass;).

 

On the other hand, the industrial amounts of waste that are now being dumped by illicit, commercial fly-tippers as referenced in the earlier post (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/24/waste-dumping-uk-environment) make the small amounts that some boaters dump look beyond trivial (yes, I've also had to put out hedge fires caused by it, but it's not as though there isn't an abundance of nearby water to deal with it). When we start hitting these commercial fly tippers with meaningful financial penalties, I would suggest something of the order of £20 per kilo of dumped waste (£1000/50Kg) with 10% of the fine going to anyone who reports them leading to a conviction, this might lead to a reduction in offending. I've just travelled into Birmingham on the New Main Line and by one of the bridges there has been dumped a whole load of builders waste including a large corner bath (look out for it, it'll probably be a feature there for some considerable time). This hasn't fallen from the sky, or even come out of the back of someone's car, a substantial sized van has been used to dump it. When those who are responsible for this vandalism are dealt with, then I'll start to get excited about some ash in a hedge.

 

I'm not condoning those who do dump such ash, but in proportion to the main fly tipping, it is indeed trivial.

 

Regarding the plastic bags mentioned earlier, isn't it also somewhat ridiculous the manner in which we deal with dog waste? We have something that naturally decomposes that we now get people to seal up in a plastic bag which will then also go to landfill where the plastic bag itself will last for decades, if not longer.. Wouldn't it be better if people used compostable starch bags to put the dog waste into some form of composter (that is of course disregarding those who hang the bags on trees for collection by the dog sh*t fairy:sick:

Agreed ! but my post was about a specific problem which we as boater can rectify. Not large scale fly tipping, not dog shit.

You will notice even the Swedish actress only deals with the smaller problems. You wont see her popping across to India, China, or Russia telling them they have "Stolen her childhood" (another pathetic lie). She is not telling the CCP they should be building electric cars, or closing down the coal fired power stations. NO! no she is dealing with the smaller problems as I am dealing with little things and I hope I can help to make a difference. I dont sit here at my Keyboard  and tell you what you must do unless I am out there doing it myself. My own personal crusade has taken about 14 tons of rubbish of the canals!

Edited by Maffi
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27 minutes ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

Starting from the position that I do indeed bag and bin the ash from my fire as you suggest, but it doesn't prevent me from seeing just how illogical it all is.

 

To begin with, what is causing the greatest damage, burning the coal in the first place? or dumping the ash in a hedge? A 20Kg bag of coal will generate 42Kg of CO2 when burnt and 4.5 Kg of ash, on a global scale which is the greater problem? Just because you cannot see the 42Kg of CO2 doesn't lessen the problem that it is causing.

 

Moving onto the disposal, the plastic bags that you are putting the ash into are just going into landfill, you cannot burn the plastic bag in a combined heat and waste unit (since the ash in it will prevent it) nor can you recycle it, so instead of being on the ground under a hedge, it is being buried in the ground somewhere else in a plastic bag (I'll come back to that later), other that the aesthetics, where lies the difference? It would be far more useful if we could find a practical purpose to use the waste ash for without putting it into plastic bags and burying it. Whilst I would accept that the ash may well kill the fauna on the towpath, you are looking at a 3 metre ribbon of land that was intended for walking on (with horses) so it could be argued that it will save CRT money on the Fountains contract for cutting the grass;).

 

You  could use a metal bucket and empty  the ash directly in the bin at the waste collection point. 

image.png.e2b068bccd0f694dcc67959291b28dac.png

 

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4 minutes ago, MartynG said:

You  could use a metal bucket and empty  the ash directly in the bin at the waste collection point. 

image.png.e2b068bccd0f694dcc67959291b28dac.png

 

I do already use a metal container, but I'm not sure simply emptying it into the bin solves the issue. When the bins are emptied a hoofing great lorry picks it up and inverts it so all of the waste tips into the back of the lorry.......except the large cloud of ash which will dissipate in the air around the neighbourhood:unsure:

Edited by Wanderer Vagabond
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1 minute ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

I do already use a metal container, but I'm not sure simply emptying it into the bin solves the issue. When the bins are emptied a hoofing great lorry picks it up and inverts is so all of the waste tips into the back of the lorry.......except the large cloud of ash which will dissipate in the air around the neighbourhood:unsure:

OK so what do you propose we do with it?

7 minutes ago, MartynG said:

You  could use a metal bucket and empty  the ash directly in the bin at the waste collection point. 

image.png.e2b068bccd0f694dcc67959291b28dac.png

 

Ooooo is that stainless?

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13 minutes ago, Maffi said:

Agreed ! but my post was about a specific problem which we as boater can rectify. Not large scale fly tipping, not dog shit.

You will notice even the Swedish actress only deals with the smaller problems. You wont see her popping across to India, China, or Russia telling them they have "Stolen her childhood" (another pathetic lie). She is not telling the CCP they should be building electric cars, or closing down the coal fired power stations. NO! no she is dealing with the smaller problems as I am dealing with little things and I hope I can help to make a difference. I dont sit here at my Keyboard  and tell you what you must do unless I am out there doing it myself. My own personal crusade has taken about 14 tons of rubbish of the canals!

Which, sadly, will equate to just 7 times as much as that single waste dumping I passed on the BCN Mainline today, which was probably the work of about 15 minutes for the b*stards involved.

2 minutes ago, Maffi said:

OK so what do you propose we do with it?

 

Re-surface the towpath?;)

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Just now, Wanderer Vagabond said:

I do already use a metal container, but I'm not sure simply emptying it into the bin solves the issue. When the bins are emptied a hoofing great lorry picks it up and inverts is so all of the waste tips into the back of the lorry.......except the large cloud of ash which will dissipate in the air around the neighbourhood:unsure:

Don't worry about that - it will be  a fraction of the emissions that came out of your chimney when you burned the coal.

 

 

image.png

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3 minutes ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

I do already use a metal container, but I'm not sure simply emptying it into the bin solves the issue. When the bins are emptied a hoofing great lorry picks it up and inverts it so all of the waste tips into the back of the lorry.......except the large cloud of ash which will dissipate in the air around the neighbourhood:unsure:

The solution there is a simple one! We sit in millions of gallons of water! Damp the ashes down before putting them in the skip.🤷‍♂️ 😉

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