Small update on Deposit.

I added a paragraph to my deposit-post, but I wonder how many return to read old posts even if they are marked with Updated, so here's the update all by itself:

I just looked a bit further; 8 % of all bottles and cans with deposit marks are not cashed.
8% does not sound like very much -- but it amounts to 140 millions bottles and cans.
Even if all were the lowest rate, 140 million Danish Kroner is a huge sum of money.
It is approximately equal to:
18.800.000 €
20.142.150 US $
16.211.418 £
30.379.594 Australian Dollars
27.072.010 Canadian Dollars.

Danish Deposit System - Updated

The answer to Messymimi's comment on my post on Negativity became so long, I decided to turn it into a post of its own.

Messymimi wrote:

We are blessed with a recycle bin into which we can throw clean paper, paperboard and cardboard, all cans even if crushed to fit more in the space, glass, any solid plastic with the recycle symbol and a number on it, and many such things. Plastic bags and film with the recycle symbol can be taken to the grocery and dropped in their recycle box.

Of course, we don't get paid for this, we pay for the recycle bin along with our garbage bin, and it gets picked up once a week.

If you want to recycle larger metal items, you can take them to a scrap metal recycling center and get paid by the pound.

I'm just glad we are able to recycle so much so easily.

Yes, people throw their trash all over the place, and 've often wondered what they are thinking and why they do it. If i'm driving somewhere and have something in my car that needs thrown away, i take it home and put it in my garbage bin where it belongs.

RECYCLABLES
We have those recycle bins too. Our nearest are 200 m from home, and we can throw paper, glass metal batteries and plastic there.

What does not fit into these bins, like cardboard, wood, larger metal (which we do not get paid for) and so on we have to drive (neighbour helping) to a "big scrap place" 8 km away. As Mimi we pay for this service via taxes and payment for our garbage bins.

And I too am very happy with this system and use it for all relevant kinds of "garbage" And those cans and other crunchables I crunch up to make room for more ;)

Our local recycling bins; from left: Paper, glass, metal, plastic.
On the white fence behind the bins you'll find a small box for batteries.

BOTTLES & CANS
But bottles and cans for beer and soft drinks come with a deposit. If I buy me a soft drink, I pay 4.50 Kr. for the contents of a cheap soft drink and 1 Kr. for the bottle. (1 € is 7.50 Kr)

The 1 Kr. for the bottle is returned to me if I hand in the bottle in the supermarket - either the one where I bought the bottle or any other. Only very few bottles are brand specific. If instead I decide to break the bottle to use the bits for decorative purposes - or just for fun, I lose my 1 Kr.

My cheap soft drink that costs me 4.50 Kr. It contains half a litre of sparkling water with a touch of lemon. If you held it in your hand and turned it around, you would find a barcode and a deposit label looking much like this one.

Pant A means Deposit lowest rate = 1 kr.
     We have a B (1.5 kr) and a C (3 kr.) as well.
ALU A on top ... is for aluminium.
     Sorry I could not find one for Plastic. It would say PLAST P on my hypothetical bottle.

All soft drinks and beers sold in Denmark - and some other things like juice, alcopops, ciders, and smoothies - either come in standard glass bottles (equals Deposit A) or has a deposit label on them,
Only wine and alcohol bottles and those containing drinks with milk are exempt from this system. I never understand the reason why.

The four cans at the bus stop (here without Super Hero vision superimposed) were all marked with Deposit A. But as they were crunched, the deposit machine cannot read the label - or recognize the thing as a can, thus no deposit will be paid back for those four cans.
Free money for the supermarket, an evil for the environment, and a bother to me - or any other - who would have picked up and cashed the cans were they not crunched.

I just looked a bit further; 8 % of all bottles and cans with deposit marks are not cashed. 8% does not sound like very much -- but it amounts to 140 millions bottles and cans. Even if all were the lowest rate, 140 millon Danish Kroner is a huge sum of money.
It is approximately 18.800.000 € or 20.142.150 US $ or 16.211.418 £ or 30.379.594 Australian Dollars or 27.072.010 Canadian Dollars.

And this is what leads me to say that the Danish deposit system is fabulous ... only we need to raise the deposit, discouraging people from crunching up the cans and breaking the bottles. And if we could have the deposit on wine and liquor bottles too and those with milk, it would be just fantastic. A wild dream would be to expand this deposit system to all of EU. Added: And this seems to be a dream that the higher ups share as well. I read a suggestion to do just this yesterday.

 - - - - -

By the way, the pull tab on one of those energy drinks and the can itself seems to be Turquoise Blue -- the colour of the month.

Pant på flasker - Deposit on Bottles

     I morges fandt Uglemor en flaske i grøftekanten på vejen hjem. En helt ny flaske. Selvfølgelig tog hun flasken med hjem, skyllede det værste øl af den og puttede den i en pose, vi har til formålet.
     Senere, når posen er fuld og Uglemor skal på indkøb, kommer flasken sammen med de andre af sin slags hen og bliver afleveret.
     Så var det Uglemor begyndte at tænke:
- Hvor meget får jeg egentlig for den flaske?
- Hvornår steg panttaksterne egenlig sidst?
- Hvorfor er det lige at de er så lave?

Svarene ligger heldigvis på nettet:
- Uglemor får 1 krone for sin møje.
- Panttaksterne er ikke steget siden 12. februar 2004, hvor de blev sat ned fra 1,50 krone.
- Officielt fordi prisen på panten skal være under nyprisen for en flaske.

- ♻ -

Uglemor undrer sig fortsat. For i de lande, vi sammenligner os med, er panten omkring det dobbelte (2 norske/svenske kroner eller som  i Tyskland 0,25 € for engangsflasker).

     Vi ved alle, at miljøet ikke har godt af flasker og dåser, at køer især ikke har godt af aluminiumsdåser.
     En heldig glasflaske kan genbruges 40 gange.
     Børn og fattigrøve burde kæmpe om flaskerne i grøftekanten, men nu bliver de i stadig højere grad efterladt på borde i skolerne, ved  busstoppesteder og som morgenens flaske, kastet ud gennem bilvinduer.

     Måske burde panten sættes op til en femmer i stedet?

Dåse, Uglemor ikke fandt, fpr det var for sent. - ♻ - A can, MotherOwl did not see until  too late.

  This morning on my way home I found a beer bottle in the ditch. As always I picked it up, to put in the bag with other bottles for later cashing in town.
MotherOwl began wondering:
- How much is the deposit for this bottle?
- When was the deposit last changed?
- Why is is so little money?

An internet search did - of course - supply MotherOwl with the answers:
- The deposit for a beer bottle is DKK 1,00
- It was lowered from DKK 1,50 back in February 2004
- Yes why? The official explanation is that the deposit must not be undercut by the price of a new bottle.

- ♻ -

MotherOwl is still wondering. In the surrounding countries, the deposit is almost double what it is in Denmark (2 Swedish / Norwegian kroner, 0,25€ in Germany (PET bottles)).

We all know that plastic bottles are not good for the environment, and that alu-cans are not good for cows.

A lucky glass bottle can be reused 40 times!

MotherOwl sees an increasing number of bottles and cans laying around everywhere. - and an increasing number without deposit symbols. They are found at the tables in school, by the bus stop, and as this morning's bottle, thrown from a passing car.

Children and poor people should be busy picking up the left bottles. Maybe it's time to raise the deposit on bottles, cans etc?

September uden spild - uge 4

Oplevelser
 

Emnet for denne uge, er oplevelse! Både i naturen, noget kulturelt eller socialt.

Der findes masser af oplevelser, hvor du ikke skal forbruge

I stedet for at købe nyt tøj eller smutte i det lokale center og gågade, kan du for eksempel tage ud i skoven eller til stranden og gå en lang går tur. Besøg dit lokale museum, eller tag en ven under armen og jeres egen kaffe med ud i efteråret. Løb en tur sammen eller tag en bold med ud .

Den er jeg helt med på.
I mange skove er der sat pæle med find vej i denne skov
Man kan selv lave sig et klippekort af en gammel morgensmadsæske, og så prøve at finde alle posterne i en skov.
Hvis man har en mobiltelefon med, kan man også i mange af skovene løse opgaver ved posterne undervejs.

Man kan også finde ting og sager i skoven - svampe og bær for eksempel, eller bognøddeskaller og fine blade til dekoration. 

Ved stranden kan man finde sten, muslingeskaller og drivglas. Hvis man er heldig måske oven i købet en klump rav. 

Alle steder kan man også tage to affaldsposer med sig - en til pantflasker og -dåser og en til SkovSkrald. Måske kan man ligefrem konkurrere om at finde mest. 

Negativitet -- Negativity

     Natten til i går havde Uglemor en underlig drøm. Der fandtes superhelte. Negative superhelte. De var så negative, at når deres blik faldt på noget affald i grøftekanten eller et andet sted, hvor det ikke skulle være, lyste affaldet op i negative farver.
     Der var især en Tuborgdåse, der gjorde indtryk på Uglemor ved at få en meget karakteristisk lyslilla-metalpink nuance.

During the night between Friday and Saturday MotherOwl had a dream. A very vivid dream. Supers existed, negative supers. They were negative, very much so, and whenever their eyes fell on garbage in a ditch, the garbage went negative too.
A beer can in a caracteristic purple-meltallic-pink colour stuck in MotherOwl's brain.

Se bare her:
And look:

Kan I se superkræfterne?
Do you see the superpower?

Ugens Ugle 6 og noget om farver -- Owl of the week, Colour Edition

     Hver gang Uglemor har set et billede som nedenstående, har hun undret sig såre, hvordan er det dog lavet, har de møjsommeligt redigeret alt andet end den relevante farve væk ... sikke et slid, og et præcisionsarbejde. Så i går legede jeg med mit nye kamera - egentlig for at se om det havde sådan en tegne-billede-funktion, som det allerførste kamera havde - og Bang! var der en funktion, hvor man kunne nøjes med at have en farve "i farver". Det har Uglemor så leget med i dag, og der bliver nok endnu mere legeri, når der kommer blomster udenfor.

- o 0 o -

Every time MotherOwl has seen a photo like the one further down, she has been wondering (oh yes Mother Owl wonders a lot). How is it done? Do people really sit down and remove all colour but the wanted one. Manually. What a time sink, and what extreme dexterity.
Then yesterday MotherOwl was fooling around with her new camera, trying to coax it into making "drawn photos" like the first one could, she found a "3 colour setting". Aha! That's how it's done.
Expect more fooling around with only blue/red/yellow/green colour settings. Especially when Spring and flowers return.

     Ugens Ugle er en spareugle i sort silikone dekoreret med en blå sløjfe. Den var en julegave til Uglemor fra Ugleungerne, og et oplagt offer for den sjove farve- eller mangel på samme-fotografering.

- o 0 o -

The Owl of the Week is a piggy bank-owl with a blue bow. A perfect victim of the new "trichromatic" photography skills.

Måske det perfekte sted for opbevaring af Grøftepant?
Maybe the right place for ditch deposit?

GrøftePant! -- DitchDeposit!

     Netop i dag tog Uglemor bussen fra et stoppested ca. en kilometer hjemmefra. I grøftekanten lå der dåser, flasker og i det hele taget skrammel. Uglemor samlede sammen, for at smide i skraldebøtten ved stoppestedet. Tænk så havde en eller anden idiot sparket bunden ud af bøtten - igen. Uglemor fik kigget lidt på "fangsten". De fleste dåser var jo med pant. Idé! Frem med indkøbsposen, fyld alle dåserne ned i og aflever dem på indkøb. Penge til Uglemor og renere natur med ét slag, ren win-win!
     Senere sad en træt Uglemor og rodede lidt rundt på Facebook. Der lå et opslag om skrald i naturen. Delt af en gruppe der hedder TrailSkrald. Genialt koncept.

 - o 0 o -

Today MotherOwl took the bus from further away from home, almost one kilometre distant. On her way MotherOwl picked up the trash in the ditches, as much as she could carry in her two hands. By the bud stop there's a rubbish bin. But some angry person had ruined the bin. MotherOwl studied her catch. Lots of cans, most with deposit. MotherOwl had an idea, she pulled out her shopping bag, and put all the cans in it. Then she handed in the cans while shopping, and received the deposit for the good ones. That's pure win. Money for MotherOwl and a cleaner ditch.
Later today MotherOwl leafed through her facebook posts. One was on how long trash stays in nature, shared by a group called TrailSkrald (TrailTrash) advocating the very same idea! Only the name ... Ugliest Danglish! MotherOwl invented a new all-Danish one, and an all-English one now we're at it.

   Ved aftenkaffen legede Uglemor med en blyant. Det kom der et elfje ud af. Og en tegning. Det er kun en skitse, og ingen af delene er fantastiske, men jeg ville så gerne dele:

- o 0 o -

Then MotherOwl played with a pencil. An elfje and a sketch of a trash-elf was the result. Not excellent any of it, but I'd like to share anyway.

      For fremtiden vil der ligge en rulle affaldsposer i Uglemors rygsæk.Så bliver der brugt to, en til SkovSkrald og en til GrøftePant.  

- o 0 o -

In the future MotherOwl will bring along some trash bags, one for the TrailTrash and  one for the DitchDeposit.