Recycling and public incompetence

wirm

Does all of Belfast have only black bins (no blue one's) or is it just my area.

We just have a black bin which is lifted every week.

thetope

wirm wrote:

Does all of Belfast have only black bins (no blue one's) or is it just my area.

We just have a black bin which is lifted every week.

i have a blue bin that used to be paper only, but now collects all dry recyclables (except glass). it is collected on a monthly basis. i have heard that it is eventually going to be switched for a black kerbside recycling bin which will be collected on a weekly basis.

i have mixed feelings about this as whilst the blue bin is only *just* big enough to deal with a month's worth of recyclables (and to be fair you can exchange it for a bigger one if you wish, i just haven't gotten round to it and there's no point if the system's going to change) a kerbside box is more of a pain in the !!!!!! because they are poorly designed (as i'm sure many of you have experienced with the lid blowing off) can be difficult to lift and are a lot easier for randoms to hoke about in my rubbish looking for identity details. i would much rather keep the blue wheely bin and have a fortnightly collection.

i really hope that in the future waste is paid for on an individual household level (as was described in waterford below) but to be honest i can't see it happening in NI... if they can't even get the finger out to install water meters it's never gonna happen for bins.

Belfastmoneysaver

recently moved house, took our recycling bins with us, becasue we have aot of recycling to do - New house also has recycling bins - so we now have two of each - Put the two blue bins out on Monday - they came back with a sticker attached
ONE BIN PER HOUSEHOLD


Message from my council appears to be "we want you to recycle,but not too much!"

Whats that about? :mad:

IvanOpinion

Belfastmoneysaver, you should not have taken the recycling bin with you ... it effectively belongs to the property not you. I think the black bins are different and belong to the owner

ivan

Belfastmoneysaver

I take your point on board but it was all listed with the solicitors, nobody made any protest - Cant see the difference between blue brown and black - a bin is a bin. And thats getting away from the issue - which is that the council only want you to recycle a binful of rubbish - anymore than that and they appear happy to let it go to landfill

wirm

Yeah I agree Belfastmoneysaver! I can't see whats wrong with having more than one bin. I suppose it depends on your bin men too, if they want to do a wee bit extra!

IvanOpinion

I think maybe you are missing the point. The big issue is to REDUCE the amount of waste we generate ... which is far better than recycling. Given the amount of wrapping we have (much driven by EU legislation) it is sometimes not easy though.

I believe that currently much of what we 'recycle' is still going to landfill simply because we do not have the capability of doing anything with it. Landfill though is finite which means that some of our waste is actually going to ROI (legally and illegally) and Scotland.

Ivan


PS: Checked last night .. some councils have different policies .. in some cases the blue bin belongs to the house and in some cases it belongs to the occupier .. if it belongs to the house then it should be left and the council may come after you for the value of it (irrespective of what your solicitor wrote down).

darrenfinlayson

you should be allowed 2 bins in a household but it should be means tested against rates. that would soon get people thinking about their waste!

dianeio

I live in a council flat in Belvoir, recently the Castlereagh council removed our blue bins as they were not being used for recycling. The main problem is that we do not have black wheelie bins as we live in flats (strange as apartments in Castlereagh do have black wheelie bins), so we have to leave our rubbish in black binbags in our communal halls, because of the smell some residents would place their binbags in the blue bins - Ah maybe this is why the recycling system was not working. The Council told us to contact Bryson House for a Kerbie if we wanted to recycle, but as yet I have received no reply from Bryson House - I don't even think they cover the Belvoir area. The councils need to be stronger on tackling the rubbish issue.

nonnymc

I seemingly have never put anything in my blue bin that shouldn't be there as it is always emptied and they have never put one of those yellow stickers on my bin which tell you when you've done it wrong. However I don't doubt that I am probably still putting some things in my black bin which COULD go into my blue bin, if only I knew they could!

You see aside from stupidity and laziness as excuses, I do feel that the (Belfast Blue, Black, Green bin areas) public have not been thoroughly enough informed as to what EXACTLY can go into the blue bins. I have the leaflets they sent out informing you of this stuck on my fridge door, but they aren't exactly comprehensive!
They highlight in a very vague way some items that can be recycled in the blue bin and then state that if an item isn't mentioned then it can't go in! But I know this is not true.

I actually have an extra list of items which CAN go into the blue bin added on to the leaflet because I went to the trouble of querying them through the recycling phone number provided on the leaflet. However the person I spoke to did not seem to be particularly knowledgeable on the subject and I suspected there was a bit of guess work involved.

More detailed information needs to be provided to make this truly work to the maximum level and increase public confidence in what they are doing.

Personally, for now I am doing the very best I can to recycle with this facility, with the information I have been given. We should have been doing this a long time ago.