Recycling.....again!!!
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Further to my thread months ago I am still feeling cross at the ineptitude of our recycling system. Maybe your town is better but here we have a big plastic box for card and paper, pink sacks for tins, glass, foil and plastic.
Well the plastic boxes blow around in high winds and mine disappeared fairly quickly. I used a couple of my own but they took the whole box and I cannot afford a new one every week!
(Surely it makes more sense for the box to contain glass and the pink sacks for card and paper).
Then, I watched the dustmen pick up the pink sack and household rubbish and bung them both in same rubbish lorry and squash....so much for my careful washing and separating.
Even the next door council does it differently. Why on earth can't we have a better system that is nationwide with everyone singing from the same hymn sheet.
I saw a documentary and they shown if u not wash out the milk, yogurt....etc from the plastic, it can not be recycled...so who wash them? If I just think of all of them....coke bottles, juice bottles, milk bottles, shampoo, shower gel, household chemical bottles....none of them can be used again if it is not washed....
I do not believe in this one time used plastic brainwash thing....I am sure any plastic can be re-used again in some way....
Some rich....politician...trashed the plastic into the sea and than made the people pay tax because of it...not even telling USA do not believe in these things.
The best would be to get back to the 80`s when all juice and drinks came in glass and we could return them...that was my pocket money....so the manufacturer washed them....filled them again and we bought it again.
The vegetables and fruits were not in plastic....contamination was not an issue that time...so why it is now? It means all the vegetables and fruits have chemicals on them and if they touch each other they will be bad?
I want to recycle in the right way......but what is it? How it should be done? And why I should do it....They used to employ people to separate the rubbish and because of this free recycling system they lost their job.
Its funny how each council does it differently, we have a green plastic bin which is for paper/card and glass then a big green bag which takes plastic, aerosols, tins, foil and they have recently introduced kerb side garden waste collection
With garden waste we can either buy recyclable bags (£6.90 for 10) and leave them on the kerb, or we can buy a large green wheelie bin but have to pay the council a fee every year to empty it.
KirstyWaddell I do sometimes go to the local tip but I do find it a struggle now I am older climbing those rickety metal stairs and heaving a sack over the top lol!
It is ridiculous that your services aren't better than that. We have a blue wheelie bin for cardboard and plastic bottles and a black box for tins, glass, clothing etc. If you have any extra glass bottles etc you can order a second box for free, which most people have. I guess it all depends which party are in charge at your local council and what their priorities are. If you're really keen, you could take things to your local household recycling centre where everything is much more organised.
Recycling in the UK is a bit of a joke. There needs to be a complete rethink on how things are done.
This is an interesting article on recycling - The price of plastics has plummeted to the extent that it isn’t worth recycling - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-recycling-myth-what-really-happens-your-rubbish
As AgnesFaludi mentioned above, a single contaminated material can end up sending an entire batch of recyclables to landfill. This article provides a list of contaminates - https://www.roadrunnerwm.com/blog/what-is-recycling-contamination
I totally agree. They don't seem to take it seriously at all. Half hearted at best and recycling could be done so much better if they put some thought and effort in it. Also the general public make no effort to recycle properly. I knew someone who proudly said they recycle everything and never put a black household sack out. Quite surprised when I told him a few of the things you can't recycle!
Random best describes the efforts of my Local Council,
Residents don't know what to recycle and what not to as their seem to be no pattern, this week alone, we placed some old summer T shirts in the recycling box and they are supposed to collect old clothing , the box was emptied and the T shirts thrown back on the pavement next to it.
Mango4 I must admit we have a white textile recycling bag, pink for card, paper, tins and glass and black for household. We can buy bags for garden waste which are compostable but I dread to think how much plastic is used and wasted for all the other things, recycling? I don't think so!!
I didn't dare start another recycling topic so am adding to this!
- There has been no improvement to our recycling system.
- The garden waste bags are now £9.60 for 10 (nice little earner for the council).
- In order to properly recycle I have to use precious water and costly energy to clean plastic containers, jars and tins. What is the point if only a small percentage of people do this?
I live next door to a family of mum, dad, and 5 kids. Great neighbours and we get on well. But, every week they put out 5 or 6 huge black sacks (dustbin size) and not one single pink sack of recyclables. I am just one person and put out half a peddle bin black sack and a full pink sack........ draw your own conclusions.
On the other side my neighbour is an elderly guy who stinks the area out with smoking cigarellos in the garden, mows the lawn in his underpants, socks and sandals and is a bit strange to say the least, but he recycles and I respect him for it.
Lynibis we have 4 bins. Our green one, which is household waste is emptied every 3 weeks. We have a brown bin for food and garden waste, blue for cardboard, pink for plastic and cans and orange for glass. My biggest issue is that our recycling bins aren't big enough. They are emptied every 3 weeks and after 2 weeks ours are full. Yes I can go to the recycling centre to get rid of the recycling but that is added time, expense etc for me. Really wish we had bigger recycling bins as we recycle everything we can.
MrsCraig they just can't seem to get it right. As I said in my earlier comment I am one person and have a full to brimming recycle sack after a week so the bin you describe wouldn't do me for 3 weeks. People must get fed up and end up putting it in household waste. Councils need to get together and initiate the colour/code/collection to be the same all over the country, it would surely make sense.
Lynibis I am going to go onto the council website to see if it is possible to get bigger recycling bins. We are a family of 3 and we only just manage with the rubbish bin every 2 weeks but the recycling can be full after one week. It would make sense to have bigger recycling bins!
We have wheelie bins where you can put all your recycling, it is collected separately from general waste & is sorted by the council. It works well.
beccatavender don't see why they can't all do that. I know it means wages for workers but sure it would save in the long run. We have to buy a wheelie bin and then pay £32 per year, surely they could provide us a bin, they would get their money back in the first year's payment.
PS That £32 was well before covid so it's probably more now.
Lynibis That's shocking we have 3 wheelie bins, recycling, general waste and composting, all provided by the council. A friend of mine's wheelie bin went missing and she had to pay for a replacement. I don't know how much she paid, just that she was really annoyed.
Lynibis Sorry to be a bit late on this topic.
We have a normal black bag collection (3 bags a fortnight) and an unlimited collection of recycling blue bags every other fortnight.
I'm not really looking forward to the street being strewn with blue bags come autumn/winter because of the wind.
Things are supposed to be changing this month where households are only going to be able to put out 3 black bags every 3 weeks. Roll on the fly-tipping. It's bad enough at the moment.
We have to take glass to bottle banks which are often full, so we have to take the bottles home again.
TheChimp gosh, I can see good and bad in there. I would not like black sacks lying around in or outdoors and if out it encourages rats etc, 3 weeks is a long time, two is bad enough. Blue bags sounds good though but as you say they are lighter and get blown around.
I am getting on but I feel bad for really old folk who cannot get to council dumps. I think they should start looking to the future and have recycling banks at the end of as many roads as possible. At least bin men would have a quicker round.
Firstly councils must put leaflets in doors explaining the importance of recycling, what is acceptable and that it has to be clean etc. So many folk don't get the basics.
We have a black bin for general waste and a green bin for recycling, these are collected once a fortnight. A food bin collected weekly and if you pay £30 a year you can have a garden bin.
eyeballkerry I am considering my area to be lucky as we have weekly collections for everything. The streets are still bad so I dread to think how they would be if we went fortnightly.
We have 4 different coloured recycling bins Black for general rubbish, Blue for cardboard, Green for plastics, glass, And tins, we also have a Brown bin for food and garden waste and they get emptied every week, 2 bins each week on a rota system and it seems to work quite well.
We have the alternate brown bin / green bin fortnightly collections which does seem to work well. We did have an issue when they took away our green wheelie bin due to health and safety as we have 10 steps at the end of the path. They gave us a useless green sack which had to be replaced several times as in windy weather they would get blown away. After several calls to the council who just told us we couldnt have a green wheelie bin we finally got the manager to visit - who could not explain why the bin men could take our brown bin up the steps but not manage the otherwise identical green bin! One week later we got a green bin back. The bin men themselves had no issue with the bins up the steps so no idea why they originally took them away.
I still remain to be convinced that much of it is worth it though...
didbygraham oh my word that sounds really jobsworth but glad you got your bin back.
We are currently waiting for a completely new 'purple lidded bin' which will be for cardboard & paper. Prior to this these items went into the grey bin but now that will only get the tins, bottles & plastics, lids etc. The black bin is for general household waste and the green bin (which you have to buy) is for the green waste - collection of this green bin also has to be paid for.
When the new purple bin arrives it will be emptied 4 weekly, as will the grey bin!
My bugbear with cleaning/washing all these things is that there is a water shortage and it is fairly well known that some of our plastic waste gets shipped abroad and this coupled with the fact that there are fires at recycling depots from time to time makes it all a waste of time, effort and water.
tumblespots it just makes you want to give up doesn't it? I am sure the average person wants to do their best for the environment but councils and gov't just can't get their act together.
Lynibis Civil servants up to their usual tricks - make it hard for the customer to comply!
We have 3 options (large wheelie bins) Black lid - general waste. Blue lid - all items to recycle except glass. Glass goes in the provided dump box and emptied same day. Green lid - garden waste (you pay for the service). Black and Blue are alternative weeks, green same week (different day) as blue. You can put ONE extra clear bag out on recycle day and if the lid doesn't close, on any bin, it won't be emptied.
When it comes to recycling and this country the tried and tested route has failed utterly miserably. I can travel 6 miles from where I live and the recycling is different and the requirements are different but the results are always the same civil servants in conjunction with there councils effectively gas lighting us and professing there green credentials at the same time. If the local approach hasn't worked and the recycling companies are stipulations getting more and more ridiculous by the minute I think if the product is recyclable then it's taken away ,recycled and that's the end of it.
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