Today was wastepaper collection with the scouts. We were fairly short on manpower, but luckily there was also quite little wastepaper to collect this time. My team found a paper mâché cow head at the beginning and we had to use it as a mascot on our truck. :-)
Afterwards we welded a steel frame for a new sink in our material store. We just used spare tent poles that were laying around unused for years.
That was an awesome project, sure, total overkill, but we had really good fun. Unfortunately, we ran out of time. We couldn’t paint the thing as it was still way too hot.
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org What’s going to happen with that paper now? 🤔
@movq@www.uninformativ.de It’s going to be recycled. We brought to the local wastepaper recycling plant.
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I presume that’s not what’s happening by default when people throw it away, right? 🤔
@movq@www.uninformativ.de No, to my knowledge it ends up at the same place when collected with the commercial wastepaper trucks, too. We get some money from the recycling company for bringing it to them. The price per ton varies with the resource price on the market and when it rains some rate is subtracted to account for higher weight due to the water. Even though it’s quite some work, it’s also a fun activity.
At least over here it’s common that (larger) local clubs participate in these wastepaper collections. I reckon it originated in times where there were no commercial wastepaper trucks and municipalities had to organize something, so they asked their clubs to participate. I can’t really remember, but I think when I was a kid, wastepaper was 100% collected by volunteers. Nowadays we also have the wastepaper recycling trucks for the „Blaue Tonne“ (blue bin). I think in the past we as the scouts had two to three collections a year, now it’s only one.
This time was very bad timing. The blue bins were emptied the same week, so there was only half the material of regular collections. The volunteer run dates are planned by the town hall and apparently not synchronized with the recycling company’s schedule.
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I see, curious. 🤔 I’ve never seen anyone but the “official” wastepaper trucks collect this stuff over here. It’s all organized by the city.
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Interesting, indeed! It didn’t occur to me that other places organize it differently. I reckon, most clubs aren’t that huge anymore as they were back in the days. So this concept only works for collecting areas that aren’t very large, hence, smaller towns and villages. The places currently listed here are not super big: https://www.du-willkommen.de/altpapiersammlung.html