Switch to alternate weekly rubbish collections to save councils money?

bertiebots

Perhaps A.Badger would rather drown in a pile of plastic bottles and tin cans than consider the sensible reasons for recycling?.
Because we live on an island which isnt big enough for the number of poeple on it, we will run out of landfill space eventually- not to mention the terrible waste of the earths resources. Its got nothing to do with tree hugging and everything to do with common sense.
Of course it is up to you ,because it is a democracy and you are entitled to your opinion , as is everyone else.

I just dont want my children to have to wade through the aftermath of apathy .
My local council is not run by the green party btw and I dont see any imposition in its recycling policy.

foxgloves

Our local council operates a fortnightly bin collection. We are supplied with 2 wheelie bins (I understand that large families can request a larger size). One is for recyclables (except glass which residents are requested to take to bottle banks) and the other is non-recyclable household waste. These bins are collected on alternate weeks. The local radio/newspapers were initially full of moans from residents - the usual moaners, who don't actually want to live in a giant island of landfill but don't want to contribute anything useful to improving the situation themselves. Most of the complaints were about rats of almost MYTHIC proportions that were apparently raiding the bins as well as seemingly biblical plagues of flies & maggots, not to mention the heave-making odours. I can't imagine what these people are putting in their bins if this is genuinely the result. I can only assume that they waste a lot of food, particularly meat-related. After some years of this system, including some hot humid periods, we have seen no evidence of rats or even flies and as we neither over-buy or waste food, there have been no problems with odour. The problem is not the government, or the local council, IT'S ALL OF US!! We are far too wasteful, the UK is running out of landfill sites, but still the usual whingers can't seem to cope with separating out their waste!

smudger1964

Thought all councils were already doing this mine in east sussex has been doing this for years

A._Badger

bertiebots wrote: »

Perhaps A.Badger would rather drown in a pile of plastic bottles and tin cans than consider the sensible reasons for recycling?.
Because we live on an island which isnt big enough for the number of poeple on it, we will run out of landfill space eventually- not to mention the terrible waste of the earths resources. Its got nothing to do with tree hugging and everything to do with common sense.
Of course it is up to you ,because it is a democracy and you are entitled to your opinion , as is everyone else.

I just dont want my children to have to wade through the aftermath of apathy .
My local council is not run by the green party btw and I dont see any imposition in its recycling policy.

That last is a bit of a non sequitur if you think about it. Just imagne what it would like if it were! Heaven knows the bin police are bad enough as it is.

As for the stuff about imaginary horrors of landfill, the amount of space dedicated to landfill isn't the problem. The problem is the EU enforcing an end to it and our client government acting like the local council it really is, by tugging its collective forelock and raising taxes to suit.

There are places in these islands that would actually be improved were they used for creatively designed and managed landfill, with methane siphoned off and used as a power source. Where landfill becomes an issue, waste combustion to generate energy is also a logical solution.

But this isn't about logic, is it? It's about feelings and emotions - the chief of which appears to be sanctimoniousness.

bertiebots

You(A.Badger) are as entitled to your opinion of course (like I said before) as everyone is ...but I just dont get why you are looking on the green /ethical board when do don't believe that there are environmental /green /ethical issues that concern you (apart from the affect it has on your pocket maybe?). You are obviously very ,very annoyed about it all thats for sure!
In relation to the OP -Do you recycle your waste/have the facilities to do so...you didn't actually say?

Ben84

Landfill costs councils a huge amount of money, and this money that is being spent on shovelling rubbish in to holes in the ground could be spent on education, care for elderly and/or disabled people, city maintenance, and plenty of other important areas. The system introduced here a couple of years ago that has alternating collections of a 240 litre landfill bin and a 240 litre recycle bin (still a very generous almost 1000 litre of rubbish a month) has significantly boosted recycling and cut landfill costs, giving us back money to spend on far more important causes. I also think it's justified on green issues, but I think the case for reducing landfill based on its costs to local residents is plenty.

Ben84

A._Badger wrote: »

That last is a bit of a non sequitur if you think about it. Just imagne what it would like if it were! Heaven knows the bin police are bad enough as it is.

As for the stuff about imaginary horrors of landfill, the amount of space dedicated to landfill isn't the problem. The problem is the EU enforcing an end to it and our client government acting like the local council it really is, by tugging its collective forelock and raising taxes to suit.

There are places in these islands that would actually be improved were they used for creatively designed and managed landfill, with methane siphoned off and used as a power source. Where landfill becomes an issue, waste combustion to generate energy is also a logical solution.

But this isn't about logic, is it? It's about feelings and emotions - the chief of which appears to be sanctimoniousness.

What are creatively designed landfills and what parts of the countryside do you propose will be improved by burying millions of tons of rubbish in them? I honestly can't think of anywhere that is currently less attractive, ecologically important or useful to humans than landfills, which are piles of rubbish that sustain very little wildlife, look horrible and have no use for farming or building. Can you identify anything that landfills do for people, communities or the environment?

The scrub found on top of covered over landfills hardly counts as countryside. Once a landfill is filled it really does nothing other than leach pollutants in to the ground water and stop the land doing anything else, while the methane we can collect lasts a few decades at best and is modest when compared to the energy saved by recycling. The landfill however remains.

Many of the UK's landfills (now collectively the size of Warwick according to the BBC) were gravel mining pits. They are actually getting full now and gravel mining has I believe decreased, leaving increasingly less convenient huge holes in the ground. New landfill site proposals are increasingly going to take land away from other uses or consume countryside, which aside from being bad for people and the environment means we're going to be converting high value land in to landfills, which eventually get full and have no further uses. It also means we'll have to dig out huge volumes of rock and soil, which we can't exactly stick in the bin, so we'll have to find something to do with all that. The economics and practicalities or building lots more landfills look very bad.

DCFC79

We've had alternate collections where 1 week its the black bin and the other its the garden waste bin with the green recycling box and food waste bin

Mids_Costcutter

smudger1964 wrote: »

Thought all councils were already doing this mine in east sussex has been doing this for years

According to the Local Government Association, just under half of all councils currently operate alternate weekly collections.

A._Badger

bertiebots wrote: »

You(A.Badger) are as entitled to your opinion of course (like I said before) as everyone is ...but I just dont get why you are looking on the green /ethical board when do don't believe that there are environmental /green /ethical issues that concern you (apart from the affect it has on your pocket maybe?).

'Green's don't live in a happy little bubble. Due to the noise they make, their ideas have become public policy and are forced on the rest of us in every day in (almost) every way - from the price we pay for energy, to the banning of incandescent lightbulbs, to mandatory 'recycling' (even when it isn't recycled), discriminatory transport planning, obscenely subsidised wind farms, - just where does the (unelected) 'Green' writ end?

So when you go on to say:

QUOTE=bertiebots;31284161]You are obviously very ,very annoyed about it all thats for sure! [/QUOTE]

You are quite right. I am annoyed and so are a lot of people. In fact, I would bet that were independent candidates to stand in local elections on a single issue - the reinstatement of conventional waste collection - they would win in a great number of places. The evidence for that is the huge support shown by newspaper readers when the subject is aired (something it certainly wasn't in recent local or national elections).

So, the fact that I happened to chance on this thread, while it might unsettle you to see that not everyone subscribes to these beliefs, shouldn't really surprise you. And because those beliefs are being asserted over those of mine and others, who do not want to be forced to indulge in pandering to 'Green' myths about recycling, on pain of fine or imprisonment, there is a strong reaction.

As 'Green' orthodoxy gets imposed with ever increasing fervour, I expect you'll be seeing quite a lot more of what ordinary people think. And quite a lot of it will be an angry reaction to being bossed around by a neo-puritanical fringe.