Kirstie Allsopp likes Skipdiving

First, as far as skips go, (and some of ours go miles!) DO ask permission, and do get in touch with us if you would like more advice on any aspect of skip hire, rubbish removal or recycling. Kirstie Allsopp's new programme Homemade Home has attracted a large audience of viewers who presumably want to try to make and do, rather than go out to the shops. It's a great programme for the recession in some ways, although in others, it's clear that Kirstie inhabits a world far removed from most of us. Besides all that, we were interested to see her skip-diving. Although it is pleasurable, to 'reclaim' skip treasure - there are a few dos and don'ts:

Whose Skip is it Anyway?
The skip will nearly always belong to someone; it will have been hired out, and besides that, will probably be on private land. We advocate going and asking the house owner or property owner if you see anything you like the look of. Otherwise you could get into all sorts of trouble.

What Not To Wear in a Skip:
I think re-cycling is completely brilliant – but it could be that until they’ve got to know you, people in the neighbourhood might not, and any girls you might want to attract could be a trifle judgemental, if they see you rummaging around. (Unless it’s Kirstie Allsopp.) Wear dark clothes, and there is less chance that neighbours will notice you as you look over the rubbish with your beady eye.

The advice of the seasoned skip-diving professional is also not to wear anything that could get you into trouble – ie no markings on your shirt that are easy to identify. Don’t know if you need to worry, as you are going to be asking to remove items, aren’t you? Similarly, wear robust footwear – and don’t forget, we are talking rubbish here – don’t wear anything you’re too attached to. It just might have all sorts of unsavoury stuff on or around it.

You could consider having a torch, after all, skips can be quite deep and you might want to examine the rubbish quite carefully. Perhaps even a pair of thick gloves, too.

Make sure you’ve got room in your boot, and that the boot has in it, before you start, some cardboard boxes. The car should also contain a friend, so that, just suppose you were chatted to by the police, you can say that your friend is moving, and you were looking for cardboard boxes.

Most importantly, DO NOT make a mess. Even if you do spot something in a skip, it’s very late at night and you don’t want to ask if you can take it, if you litter, you are breaking the law and can be prosecuted. Leave the skip as it was, and you are also being responsible to other recyclers who also would like not to get into trouble for skip-diving.

Serious skip-divers also like to frequent the back of computer repair stores, electronics stores, car shops, satellite shops, book shops, industrial estates and mobile phone stores. Again, though, these premises are mostly private, so ask permission. And if you are truly a bad, bad person, you could go and take a look behind some flower stores, or even horticultural nurseries. Some flowers that get thrown out by flower shops are hardly wilted at all! However, I don’t think even Kistie would be impressed by ‘reclaimed’ flowers, so here you really and truly do not want to be seen!

The Dark Side of Skips:
Remember that in fact, this is where a lot of hackers and identity thieves get their information. Although I would never advocate doing this, imagine sorting through the waste outside large companies. This is why you should always ask permission – you can get some really nasty treatment, if the police see you being nosy with a skip and suspect identity theft. Or, perhaps even worse, they might think that you’re a journalist.

Teach Children to Recycle

Some of us may still be struggling with recycling - finding ourselves throwing out things in the 'main rubbish' that we do secretly know could be recycled. Although we struggle, we can make things easier for the next generation, by getting in there now and showing our children how to recycle. This way, they are being educated from scratch to accept recycling as part of the scheme of things.

Although landfill sites are managed responsibly in the UK, and there is much research being undertaken in order to help improve the ways in which these can be run, we should still be aiming to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.


Teach the Young to Recycle:
It's best to involve children by getting them to see both the serious and the light side of rubbish. You can explain about the concept of space on this planet, and about how there is a huge demand for items to consume - items which are very difficult to get rid of, once they stop working. These are both quite complicated subjects but children do seem to grasp them, especially if they are also shown by example. So do set your children the task of separating out your own household waste, into categories like: paper, organic (for compost), glass, plastics etc.. Children generally love 'ordering' and 'sorting' things, although, the reverse side of this is, as Jack Dee said, that it can sometimes seem as though you are having to file your rubbish, rather than just throw it away.


So set up an area in your home with bins for the main items that your local council will collect. There is a lot of information available that can explain further to children how materials can be recycled; you can get this on-line, or from your local library. Your child's school will probably be participating in some sort of scheme to help educate children about this subject, too.

School:
Many schools in the UK now are involved in environmental education, which is a core part of the curriculum, and they will take recycling for granted. You may even find that your children can teach you about recycling and rubbish disposal! Many schools are also very grateful to receive arts materials in the form of old boxes, toilet rolls etc, and this way your child can also see that waste materials can be re-used in entertaining ways.

It is also educational to take the family to the local recycling centre, where they can again see old things being categorised in various ways. Once they are over a certain age they can also visit a landfill site to learn more about how they work.

Finally, if you are clearing out rubbish in your home and have large items that need throwing out, do not forget to check with your local skip hire company, or your man and van collection service, how responsible they are about waste disposal. If your children hear you asking questions like this, this will also educate them and you will be setting them a great example.

Biochar - recycle sewage and help stop climate change

Whoever would have thought people could get excited over sewage? Well they are, in Rothamsted, in South-East England, where trials of a new waste-management process are about to begin.Normally, sewage treatment is a significant source of greenhouse gases, and so contributes to global warming. Sewage waste is usually incinerated, creating carbon emissions, and the resulting ash is used in the building industry.

A new process, that results in the creation of something called biochar, could change all this. The creation of prevents escape gases from going into the atmosphere; instead they are actually used to drive the process of treatment itself, and the product can also improve soil structure and water retention, and make soil more attractive to worms. This has been shown in Australia, the US, and Germany, where it has been found that the honeycomb structure of biochar helps to create a reservoir for moisture and fertilisers, thus cutting demand for the carbon-intensive soil treatments, and improving farm productivity.

In the sewage treatment process, a conveyor belt conveys a stream of drying effluent into a cooker where it is cooked, using gases that have actually been generated from cooking. Once cooked, what emerges is charcoal, with the carbon locked in - carbon that would otherwise have gone into the rest of the environment. This charcoal is then buried in the ground to prevent the carbon from entering the atmosphere for a projected 1,000 years or more.

Those who work with the technology are so excited by it that they want it included in the next global climate agreement, backed by activists, concerned about climate change.

At Bingen, the design engineer for the biochar plant, Helmut Gerber, originally created the pyrolysis equipment to help solve the problem of ash from sewage waste choking conventional boilers. Now, 10% of the sewage stream is diverted to the pyrolysis plant, where it is heated using very little oxygen, and where carbon monoxide and methane are burned to heat the pyrolysis process. This also results in lower fuel costs and less carbon emissions from the sewage treatment process. Mr Gerber thinks that it is possible that around 60% of the sewage carbon is locked into the char. This also helps to neutralise the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - the removal that the plants that go to create the bio-mass were originally responsible for. So the whole process is 'carbon negative.'

Some bio-char points: Making the technology affordable could be difficult. Moreover, current systems do not reward carbon storage, but rather the production of energy from biomass and waste. Biochar would need clear global incentives. However, these might be provided by the fact that, as Professor David Manning at Newcastle University, believes, that devleoped correctly, biochar could lock up as much carbon as the amount that is generated by aviation.

Biochar attracts worms. It captures nutrients that would otherwise disappear in water run-off, reducing the need for carbon-intense soil treatments or fertilisers.
Research at Cornell University in New York, US, seems to show that burying biochar can double the soil's storage of organic carbon, whereas compost releases its carbon in a relatively short period of time.

Australian research shows that biochar can reduce nitrous oxide emissions from soil. Nitrous oxide is a very powerful greenhouse gas. At the University of Bayreuth, Germany, Dr Bruno Glaser says that research suggests that biochar could double plant growth in poor soils.

Research on biochar began back in 1947. But this has been forgotten until the 1980s. Now there is a lot of excitement about what biochar can achieve.

Paul and Karen Cairns, owners of national UK skip hire company, SkipsForYou, have said that they are keen to tell people as much as they can about initiatives like this - given the recent landfill tax hike, they want to see not only their sub-contractors understanding how best to reduce landfill, but also spread the word to a wider audience.