How big are your bins?

moonrakerz

donnalou wrote:

So I was just wondering how much rubbish do you all produce?

Donna

Sorry Donna, but you are already being brainwashed into believing that you "produce" rubbish. Unless of course you have a shed at the bottom of your garden where you somehow produce rubbish from nothing.

The rubbish that we are continually being accused of "producing", mainly comprises of the gross over-packaging that is foisted upon us by the retail trade. Both Central and Local Government are ignoring this because they see the disposal and recycling industries as yet another way to get more money out of the tax payers. They are tinkering around with the symptoms of the problem, not attacking the root cause.

Next time you get home from the shops, cast an eye over your shopping and say, does it REALLY need to be packed like that ?

Three current ludicrous examples:
Why are batteries sealed in plastic on a cardboard backing ?
Why does a bunch of bananas come with a plastic label and a hook ? (Morrisons !)
Why does a multi-pack of baked beans have to be held together by a piece of cardboard - the computer is more than capable of giving you the "pack" price if you have four loose cans !

I've now started pulling off some of this packaging and leaving it at the checkout. I get dirty looks, but it really is their problem.

Icemoose

Bins – my nightmare but seeing as I am going to be dreaming them in the next hour I am happy to put my points forward!

We have a “Grey Bin” for normal household waste that is standard at 240l then we do a smaller one often requested by older people at 120l. The council did switch to fortnightly collections last year but the Labour council decided to tell me they would introduce the weekly bins again if they got in. Surprise surprise they did and the weekly bin collections where brought back months later much to the annoyance of everyone who had worked damn hard to get people to accept fortnightly collections and take responsibility for there own rubbish!

Then there is the “Green Box” which is for bottles, glass, cans etc and does not come with a lid, so in weather like now half the contents blow over the streets which generate more complaints from people. Lids are available and have to be collected from local offices! These are not big, rather like a crisp box but you can have upto three per household!

People for two years have been asking can we have a bin, like many other councils offer and last month they started to trial a “Burgundy Bin” also a 240l in parts of the town. I should think eventually this will be rolled out to the entire town.

Then there is the “Green Bin” which is also a 240l and for GARDEN WASTE, if anything goes into this that is not garden or food waste that can rot down then your bin does not get emptied. Beware never put bin bags into it in the hope of keeping it clean! Also never smell the inside as you’re likely to pass out from the odour as half the contents never get emptied because they are damp!

Green Boxes and Green Bins are only collected every two weeks.

Then there is the “White Paper Sack” for yes you guess it paper. This also has a nasty habit of blowing away and at the moment they are trailing a new improved bag with a tyre in the bottom to stop it from flying around the town and ending up in trees!

I was happy on F/N collections because I live alone so didn’t really struggle and had been recycling pretty much all I could for the past 9 years. I was surprised at the amount of people that where under the impression that they didn’t have the separate there waste because it was the council’s job to do so!

There are a lot of large families near me who never put out recycling boxes for there plastics and tins, these are the people who annoy me for not making an effort. You’re not telling the families where I live with 3 + kids never use milk cartons, orange bottle, pop bottle, coffee jars, or tins from beans and dog food… some people are just to lazy to be bothered.

The council in question made some mistakes with there plans but they soon learned from them and as each area of the town went onto f/n collections they where more prepared for the feedback and issues raised. All the hard work the staff put in was lost when the Labour Councillor decided to just revert back to weekly collections!

Now I am off to bed to go have my nightly nightmares about bins and collections. I don’t count sheep I could wheelie bins…. Yep you guessed it again…. I work for the refuse department (among others) at the council!

sunstarrr

irnbru wrote:

It's mainly cardboard that gets thrown away here as we've no facilities for it AFAIK.

I wish we could recycle cardboard.. here too we have no facility for it, because we live in a block of flats we have to use the street recycling bins (no door-to-door collection), and there's no street recycling bin for cardboard
there are 2 of us and I think we have on average one big black bin bag of rubbish a week, maybe very slightly more. But the bulk of that is cardboard packaging......
The stupid thing is if we didn't live in a purpose-built flat, if ours was a flat in a a house conversion -- which all the other buildings on our street are -- then we would have door-to-door recycling and we would then we able to recycle cardboard.....

rygon

moonrakerz wrote:

Why does a bunch of bananas come with a plastic label and a hook ? (Morrisons !)

In tescos and asdas they come in plastic bags!!! Ive never understood why veg has to be sealed...it all gets washed before eating.

The worst ive seen is corn on the cobs in tescos. Naturally they come with leaves which are great to protect them. But no tesco have to remove these..cut them down to size and then wrap them in polystyrene and shrink wrap them. This must cost them quite a bit and are people that lazy they have to have them prepared so they buy them.

N9eav

rygon wrote:

The worst ive seen is corn on the cobs in tescos. Naturally they come with leaves which are great to protect them. But no tesco have to remove these..cut them down to size and then wrap them in polystyrene and shrink wrap them. This must cost them quite a bit and are people that lazy they have to have them prepared so they buy them.

Yes they are lazy and no it does not cost them it costs the customer!

We are still on bags.

Black for rubbish
Green for glass
Pink for plastic
clear for paper
blue for clothes
Cardboard can be bailed lose

I put out 30 bags yesterday.

Altarf

Icemoose wrote:

The council did switch to fortnightly collections last year but the Labour council decided to tell me they would introduce the weekly bins again if they got in. Surprise surprise they did and the weekly bin collections where brought back months later much to the annoyance of everyone who had worked damn hard to get people to accept fortnightly collections and take responsibility for there own rubbish!

Fortnightly rubbish collections do not reduce waste. What do you think happens to it in the intervening week? Does it vanish into thin air. All it does is increase the rat population, the bins stink, and the guys on the bin wagon have to move bins that are twice as heavy.

The purpose of fortnightly rubbish collections is to allow the local authority to cut costs or introduce a garden waste collection and falsify their recycling figures.

Icemoose wrote:

We have a “Grey Bin” for normal household waste that is standard at 240l...

Then there is the “Green Box” which is for bottles, glass, cans etc ...

last month they started to trial a “Burgundy Bin” also a 240l ...

Then there is the “Green Bin” which is also a 240l and for GARDEN WASTE

And don't residential streets look better with all those bins outside.

Flymouse

I think the point Icemoose was making is that fortnightly collections may make people THINK about how much rubbish they chuck into landfill & therefore make an effort to reduce waste - its far too easy for people just to dump stuff outside each week & not give it a thought but we are storing up a nightmare for the next generation, I read somewhere i think that all landfill sites in the SEast wiil be full in a few years time. I think its high time we took a bit of responsibility for this as individuals, i'd be happy to see councils fine people who put out loads of rubbish each week, drastic measures maybe but so many people are SO LAZY about this. Neighbours over the road put out 5+ bin bags every week, their recycling bin is never used, & there's only 2 of them & a dog, I feel like going over there now....grrrr. I have every sympathy with folks like Sunstarr who live in flats & dont have the option of doorstep collections & compost bins in garden, but well done sunstarr for doing what you can and FOR MAKING AN EFFORT. lots of people really try now to reduce waste but there are lots more who don't, we're way behind other EU countries in recycling but as icemoose quite rightly said we need to reduce packaging at source, everything is covered in the stuff in supermarkets. i try not to buy overpackaged stuff in the ist place (buy loose fruit from grocers for example & always decline plastic bags, goes straight in my basket) but its not always possible, icemoose i really admire you for dumping it at the checkout, wish i had the bottle to do it, theyd soon get the message if we all did it....
edit, sorry i've just realised i've got two posts mixed up, it was MOONRAKERZ in the post immediately above icemoose's who made the good point about packaging & leaving it at the checkout, sorry guys!

ailuro2

Since we got our little green recycling box our family of three fills about two black bags a week with rubbish, since we have our bin collected weekly it is never full. This normally consists of packaging and tetra paks, although I've started buying my OJ in plastic recyclable bottles.

I'd be happy to have the general bin collected fortnightly and have the bottles/pet1 / pet2 and aluminium cans collected weekly, or be given a bigger compartmentalised bin to help make the binmen's job easier.

Brown bin for compost is collected fortnightly in spring summer autumn and is now once a month in winter which is great, as they didn't used to collect at all in wintertime.:D


I, too, never cease to be amazed by the number of FAMILIES in our street who don't put out their recycling box, or their big blue paper bin which is collected once a month (both of ours are always filled to the brim-even with using leftover kettle water to squish the plastic bottles!)

I think one day soon we will be in a position to weigh people's recycling and offset it against the cost of their landfill rubbish. It's done in Scandinavian countries already, and would have the knock on effect of people leaving their packaging behind in the supermarket, or, dare I say it, NOT BUYING overpackaged goods in the first place.

Great topic, btw!

Altarf

Flymouse wrote:

I think the point Icemoose was making is that fortnightly collections may make people THINK about how much rubbish they chuck into landfill & therefore make an effort to reduce waste

You can wish for anything you like, but it's not going to happen. People will continue to throw away the same amount of rubbish, and as soon as one of the political parties breaks ranks, as they did in Icemoose's case, then the people will kick the greens out.

Flymouse wrote:

so many people are SO LAZY about this.

Why is it this forum is so full of people insulting others? Almost every post has a comment about someone being lazy or stupid.

Stompa

We have a blue box for plastics which is collected fortnightly. It seems very inefficient though as it takes us 6 months to actually gather enough plastic to fill the box.