Recycling: Family reduces rubbish to just one bag a year!

[Rupert_Baehr]

Link here.

 

Although it's on the increase in the U.K, it would appear that many people don't perhaps do as much as they could when it comes to recycling.

 

Sometimes we lack the education as to what can and what can't be recycled, sometimes we don't have the correct facilities to dispose of recyclables that we do have (plastic bottles, carrier bags etc) and sometimes, it appears that we just simply can't be arsed because it's not something that directly affects us - and therefore lack motivation to do anything about it.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

When I lived in the UK, my local council would accept aluminium cans, steel cans, and certain plastic bottles in the recycling bin. Newspapers were collected separately. That was it. I put a large piece of aluminium (about 20lb) in the recyclable bin and they refused it: 'We don't take scrap metal' - I took it (along with sacks of crushed aluminium cans) to a scrap dealer and he paid me a fair bit for it.

 

Here, I have a wheelie bin for paper. ALL paper and cardboard - provided it's clean. (Includes old phone books, too. - For some reason, phone books were deemed to be non-recyclable where I lived in the UK.)

 

ALL plastic (includes all non-refundable plastic bottles, styrofoam, margarine tubs, cellophane, plastic bags and plastic tops goes in a recyclables bag, along with milk containers, sweet wrappers, aluminium cans, steel cans, metal bottle tops, ice-cream wrappers, toothpaste tubes and tinfoil.

 

Shops are required to provide waste bins - and they pay a lot to have those bins emptied. If you go to a supermarket and the items you buy are over packaged, you take them out of the excess packaging and the shop has to pay to have that removed. Over-packaging isn't a big problem here. The supermarkets have to pay to have it taken away, so they put 'considerable pressure' on their suppliers not to over-package in the first place.

 

I have to take glass containers (no corks or lids) to a bottle bank. - There are about 5 or 6 of them dotted around; nobody lives more than half a mile or so from one.

 

Vegetable waste, 'dirty' paper (used kitchen towel) coffee grounds and other food waste (we don't have a lot of that - I've got 2 dogs) could either go in a 'bio-waste' bin or - as I prefer - in my composter.

 

The only things that go in the non-recyclable container - the waste container - are dirt. Mainly vacuum cleaner bags, but a few other non-bio-degradable things, too.

 

Waste collecton is charged separately. I pay about £120 a year 'rent' for the paper wheelie, the waste wheelie and an (effectively unlimited) supply of recyclables bags. Every time the waste wheelie is emptied - it's a 120 litre wheelie, so it needs emptying only once or twice a year - I pay about £4.

 

If people aren't recycling in the UK is it because they're too lazy, or is it because the council won't collect the recyclables?

 

As far as dog poop goes, the council provide stainless-steel containers with dispensers filled with bio-degradable plasric poop bags. You are expected to clean up after your dog.

 

I recycle more than 98% of the stuff I throw away. - Far more than I did when I lived in the UK. I don't recycle more because I've changed; I recycle more because the council will take more items as recyclable waste.

[*_ash_*]

I agree. Mumbai being one of those places. Apparently their recycling is at 80% - whereas ours is about 23%.

 

To be fair though, most of that recycled figure, is done by people living in the slums. I can't see many UK'ers scavenging dumpit sites for plastic bottles.

[llamatron]

Keep on recycling if it makes you feel good, but just know that theres a couple of billion Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis who arn't doing any recycling whatsoever!

 

yeah why bother, and when a landfill site is needed next to your house just say no and send it off to someone else. fabulous attitude!

[NightFlight]

I try and recycle where and when i can but generally i'm crap at it and i hold my hands up and admit it.

It's such a pita to recycle in sheffield, When i used to live in peterborough, there were fortnightly collections of recycling (plastics and cans) here, we're expected to do it ourselves, and only paper is collected.

 

One thing i am partial to recycling though is tin foil, after watching how it's made, seeing the huge amount of energy and resources that go into making a roll of tinfoil to through it away after 45minutes of use feels almost heretical. (other advantages of it, is it scrunches up nice and small so sotring it til i cba to go to the recycling facility is much less of a burden.

 

If only kids were'nt such scumbags these days, the council could put small recylcing facilities in communities/at the end of roads so that people could just drop off stuff to be recycled more conveniently, but we all know, the local youths would quicly see paid to that "ghey" idea and probably end up scattering the streets with recycling.

[focusedhypno]

I like being able to send less to landfill. I have no idea why some people on here seem to have a problem with recycling...doesn't make any sense to not recycle stuff if you can.

I have been putting a lot of my food scraps into my wormery over the last year and have been loving the worm-juice fertiliser I've been getting. Unfortunately the lil wrigglers couldn't much through all the kitchen scraps we produce so I got a compost bin and I can't wait to get that going. I'm not even a gardener type, I just like doing it. We only put our wheelie bin out every 3 weeks or so too. We should get a refund on our council tax if you ask me....let the wasteful types pay to be wasteful and reward the ones who aren't

[Rupert_Baehr]

...

I have been putting a lot of my food scraps into my wormery over the last year and have been loving the worm-juice fertiliser I've been getting. ...

 

That's the first time I've heard that description.

 

Ward's used to make good beer when I lived there. What do you have nowadays?

 

'Worm juice fertiliser'

LMAO! :hihi:

[Berberis]

How many miles do this family drive to go to all the different shops, farm shops etc to insure less none recyclable packaging?