Recycling

[Paddy]

I have a brown box in the kitchen for food waste, which then goes into the big brown bin along with garden waste. Plus a green bin for general stuff, and a big blue box for paper - and I think plastic bottles, but I don't tend to have many of them.

I don't have a problem with it up to a point. The thing that annoys me is at least 90% of the paper I'm throwing away every fortnight is either junk mail,or other stuff that I could do without or could be emailed.

I have a fix for that. I save up all the flyers, pick a lucky one at random and then shove everything through their letterbox

[alluvial]

Everything went into a black bin until recently (as they only collected metal, glass & newpsapers).

Now we also have a green bin. Evrything that used to go into the black bin now goes in the green bin. The black bin is now for plastics and card.

Plastics confuse me though. I generally look for the recycleable logo that is embossed somewhere on the plastic container / package. If it's there, into the bin it goes. It appears that not all recycleable plastics are recycled by our local authority though. Only certain ones & recently the collection have started getting shirty about the wrong kinds of recycleable plastics in the green bin.

It's all becoming a real faff.

I work on the premise that if it remotely resembles plastic, it goes in the plastics sack. All paper and cardboard, food contaminated or not goes into the paper and carboard sack. If they are only going to collect my general rubbish every two weeks, then I will put as much as possible into the weekly recycling collection and then they can sort it at their end.

Yes, I am a bad man.

[Mich the Tester]

Well, if you don't wash the containers and they are left in an open bin (as is the case here) they will attract wermin.

That's not a very nice word for civil servants.

[RetSet]

In our household, anything sort-able goes into recycling (rinsed first, if it's likely to to get smelly between chucking out and collection) and the sloppy stuff goes into landfill.

It's a special arrangement we have with our council. We pretend to sort, and they pretend to recycle

[d000hg]

Yes, I am a bad man.

They clean and process everything thoroughly so I think that's the right way to do it. Pizza boxes, grease & all, go in our paper/card bin.

[alluvial]

They clean and process everything thoroughly so I think that's the right way to do it. Pizza boxes, grease & all, go in our paper/card bin.

Up here, they specifically exclude any food contaminated cardboard like that. Me, I don't want it hanging around for another week so they get to sort it out for me.

[NotAllThere]

We pay ~£1.50 for each 35l bin bag full, so it makes financial sense to recycle glass, PET, paper etc. The nearest recycling spots for most residents is within walking distance, though we have kerbside pick up for paper and cardboard.

Despite now having a grown up family (3 kids still living at home), our weekly rubbish is about one quarter what it was in the UK.

[d000hg]

Next door has a high-temperature compost bin, that takes a good proportion of our non-recyclables as well as grass clippings

[RetSet]

Next door has a high-temperature compost bin, that takes a good proportion of our non-recyclables as well as grass clippings

Ooh! What does one of those look like?

I presume it composts in double quick time, then?

[d000hg]

Just a polystyrene box really to keep the heat in.