Too much rubbish for your wheelie bins?

[Bonny]

Just think of the money wasted by each Council paying someone to decide how they're going to re-cycle, purchasing bins/bags/boxes etc. All of which could have been done at a National level thus ensuring consistency across the country. We have a green bin for garden waste - it MUST NOT contain anything other than garden waste or thick cardboard. No veg peelings allowed or anything like that.

 

We have a blue box for cans and glass (broken glass not permitted), a blue bag for paper. All of which are collected fortnightly.

 

In addition we wash and save platic cartons and take them to the recycling point at the dump.

 

Our general waste bin is usually about full by the time the fortnightly collection comes around. If we have any excess then we make trips to the tip. I think most of our rubbish comes in the form of excess packaging for household things and toys.

[rothschild]

We are a family of three adults.

We used to have the blue wheely bin for paper etc until I told em where to shove it. I believe it was run by onyx back then. Our bin was kept on our land which was a pavement width from the roadside. I couldn't park the bin on the pavement edge because of cars being there so I figured it would still be collected from it's position of about 2 foot away......as indeed it was for the first 6 months. Then suddenly they decided that if I didn't park it on the pavement, which grossly narrowed the walkway for pedestrians, then they wouldn't collect it. I rang up about this and was spoken to by a stroppy young lady that told me that if I couldn't be bothered to put it where she said it should be, then they wouldn't bother to collect it! She was very rude to me so in turn I told her that if they couldn't be bothered to collect it then I wouldn't bother to fill it in future so they may as well come and take it away. Oh yes.....they came and took it away the very next day. They used a lorry especially to collect it in and in the process they up-ended the contents all over the pavement!!!

Anyhow......we now have just the black bin for general rubbish and the recently deposited blue box for paper.

General rubbish consists of one small bag along with a sack of rabbit/guinnea pig stuff. There's far too much of that for me to compost on a weekly basis. I have 2 compost bins and a compost heap along with the rabbit and guinea pigs (munchers), so there's never ever any compostable material going into our bin apart from their deposits which are beneficia to re-cyclingl. If we had a green bin their deposits would go in that, but we don't have one of those bins.

The blue paper box is collected fortnightly and amazingly enough it's collected from the same place that the blue bin used to be left in, without any fuss!

Because we no longer have a blue bin I have a bag for glass in our utility room and I take that to the local re-cycling place at the co-op. I also have a bag for plastics which I re-cycle at the same time as the glass. Tins.......of which I use very few...go in with the plastics. I never make a special journey to re-cycle the glass/plastic and tin either.......I take them when I have to go to the shops or the bank etc. Sometimes they can all be overflowing!

Given that I couldn't possibly walk the couple of miles to the re-cycling plant while lugging bags full of glass/tin/plastic (and more if it involved paper and compostable stuff), I wonder just how "friendly" all of this is after taking into account the petrol etc which I have to use in order to re-cycle these things?

Back to the OP though........our wheelie bin never gets even near to full but given that it has the remains of cooked meals in it I wouldn't like to see fortnightly collections........especially in the summer months.

[Sarayne]

I agree with two points that have been raised here, there is no consistency with recycling in Sheffield. Where I live only our paper is collected, and that is once a month.

 

However, I do recycle everything else best I can. Which leads me to the second point of agreement

 

Where to store it all?! My boyfriend drinks an UNGODLY amount of milk, so I have to stomp down on all the cartons which, even when rinsed leaves a yacky stale smell about the bag. And then, I could only take everything to Tesco in small quantities as I am cursed with the most feeble arms you have ever seen.

[poppins]

just take it to the local dumpsite

 

Exactly, thats what I do, I've met a lot of nice people there too

[Harrod]

Just put surplus rubbish in a neighbours bin. They will not mind.

[BIGLIL]

Since I got the new bin and box for recycling I only put my black bin out once a month , even then it`s rarely full. I put my rubbish in degradeable sealed bags so there`s no odour problem.

[Eater Sundae]

We (two adults, one child) used to fill the blue bin with paper, yet still needed to take surplus paper to a recycle box (along with bottles that we took at the same time). Since they changed over to using the blue bin for glass, plastic and metal, and the new boxes for paper, we have even more surplus paper to take to the recycle point.

 

Our black bin is never full. Typically it has one bin bag per week, so we often don't bother taking it out.

[123456A]

[__________

[Oohmissus]

I don't get why we get a small box for paper and a huge blue bin for glass and bottles. We go through much more paper and card than bottles. It's stupid.

 

Same here. Who needs a bin that big for bottles and cans? The council didn't think this one through properly..

[Lorri]

No we rarely fill our black bin and I put it out every other week.