How big are your bins?

Flymouse

Altarf, I haven't called anyone stupid - most of us don't have that excuse. I'm sorry but I still think that if you're provided with a recycling bin that's collected from your doorstep the least you can do is make the effort to use it. You're probably right to be cynical about the motives the council have for recycling but it is still something we should be doing. It may not 'save the planet' but it's a step in the right direction & we should all play our part including me & yes, we shouldnt be lazy about it. Anyway, surely we should be setting an example to the children in this world, after all they will be the future custodians of the planet. I'm not an idealist but at the same time i dont think its good enough just to sit back & say "people" will never change, that's just an excuse to carry on regardless. There are lots of folks who are doing their bit to reduce waste as you can see from this thread & many others.
I personally dont care what the recycling bins look like, that's not really important is it?

edit; like donnalou I'm surprised how much recycling facilities differ with each council; ours doesnt collect plastic bottles but if i lived a couple of miles further down the road they would collect (diff borough) its really annoying, i have to drive miles to the nearest tip that takes them which sort of defeats the object. i save them up in the garage for whenever we may go in that direction & i have milk off the milkman now in bottles as plastic milkcartons were my main source of waste. its more expensive but i suppose i'm supporting the milkie

Altarf

Flymouse wrote:

Altarf, I haven't called anyone stupid

But you have called them lazy.

Flymouse wrote:

I'm sorry but I still think that if you're provided with a recycling bin that's collected from your doorstep the least you can do is make the effort to use it.

Why? You may have chosen your lifestyle, but I see no reason why should have the right to impose your views on others.

Flymouse wrote:

You're probably right to be cynical about the motives the council have for recycling but it is still something we should be doing.

Only if there is a purpose and not the dishonesty of the fortnightly bin collections, which still collect exactly the same amount of waste.

Flymouse wrote:

It may not 'save the planet' but it's a step in the right direction & we should all play our part including me & yes, we shouldnt be lazy about it.

I take issue with pointless measures being imposed by politically correct councils as a cost saving measure, dressed up as a green issue, as they know that to disagree with the 'save the planet' view is not politically acceptable, even if what they have introduced is nonsense.

If you choose to believe the council propaganda that is your lifestyle choice, but not one that you have the right to impose on others.

Flymouse wrote:

Anyway, surely we should be setting an example to the children in this world, after all they will be the future custodians of the planet. I'm not an idealist but at the same time i dont think its good enough just to sit back & say "people" will never change, that's just an excuse to carry on regardless. There are lots of folks who are doing their bit to reduce waste as you can see from this thread & many others.

All I can see from this thread is people getting worked up that the majority of the population don't have their view of the world and consider them lazy.

Flymouse wrote:

I personally dont care what the recycling bins look like, that's not really important is it?

I do, and consider it far more important than councils fiddling their recycling figures.

Icemoose

Altarf wrote:

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.

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

I don’t recall saying they reduced waste, quote me if I am wrong….

Bins stink? Most people are quite capable of lining there bin with a bin liner or even cleaning them out once in a blue moon! My bin does not stink (except the green garden waste one). But then I always bag up my waste!

Rats will always be around where humans live, dropping half a kebab on the floor, excess waste bags thrown next to the wheelie bin because they have created too much waste in the first place and not bothered to make an effort to recycle things in the first place. Rats will never go away changing to fortnightly bins makes no difference to the rat population! (I could prove this from a spreadsheet I created in my job about the increase in calls about rats seen for the pest control department!)

Regarding the weight of the bins, the guys on the bins don’t have to move bins that are too heavy, have the lid up or are too compacted due to the health and safety aspects when it’s loaded onto the back of the wagon! So the simple answer is if your bin is too heavy then tough your left with a full bin and under no circumstances would the crew come back to remove unless you made it safe for them to remove and disposed of the excess waste yourself and only them it would be emptied on your next collection.

Flymouse wrote:

I'm sorry but I still think that if you're provided with a recycling bin that's collected from your doorstep the least you can do is make the effort to use it. You're probably right to be cynical about the motives the council have for recycling but it is still something we should be doing. It may not 'save the planet' but it's a step in the right direction

Well said Flymouse, could not agree more!

This is one of the biggest problems! Recycling containers are provided and many people are TOO LAZY to use them. The excuses I’ve heard over the years are unreal.

As a householder you are responsible for the waste that you create, if you choose to buy something in a shop then it is your responsibility to ensure you dispose of the packing it came in (of course the supermarkets are partly to blame as discussed above). It’s your waste and you have a responsibility, if some people are too lazy to separate there waste into containers provided for them then yes I would deem them as lazy!

I am not a green person, I don’t rant about the planet everywhere but I think everyone has a responsibility to recycling things they use at home especially when most councils offer a kerbside collection – it’s not exactly hard and for people with children it could almost be fun to teach them how important it is to recycle for the future of there planet. Perhaps those people that don’t recycle don’t care about the well being of others.

I was amazed on my first trip to Sweden 12 years ago and how organised they where in recycling items, they even had battery boxes on walls to pop used batteries in (this comes from the era when walkmans where the range).

I have witnessed Swedish children at concerts collecting used bottles off the floor and bagging them up to return to the supermarket to get the 1 krona back on them, you can imagine how many bottles can be created outside a concert arena. They do this because (a) they are taught responsibility from an early age and (b) it’s a way to make some money. I could really imagine kids around my way doing that. Most of them are too lazy to take there rubbish in and prefer to throw them into the street (I’ve collected 3 bottles today from off the close)…

It all comes down to just being a little responsible!

Altarf

Icemoose wrote:

My bin does not stink (except the green garden waste one). But then I always bag up my waste!

And you have a weekly collection. With a fortnightly collection the bins stink in the summer no matter what you do. Fact.

Icemoose wrote:

Rats will always be around where humans live, dropping half a kebab on the floor, excess waste bags thrown next to the wheelie bin because they have created too much waste in the first place and not bothered to make an effort to recycle things in the first place. Rats will never go away changing to fortnightly bins makes no difference to the rat population!

So I suppose the National Pest Technicians Association is incorrect when it blames the increase in rats on fortnightly collections.

Icemoose wrote:

Regarding the weight of the bins, the guys on the bins don’t have to move bins that are too heavy, have the lid up or are too compacted due to the health and safety aspects when it’s loaded onto the back of the wagon! So the simple answer is if your bin is too heavy then tough your left with a full bin and under no circumstances would the crew come back to remove unless you made it safe for them to remove and disposed of the excess waste yourself and only them it would be emptied on your next collection.

So I can expect the this as the next dishonest trick from the council. Introduce fortnightly collections and then say that the bin is too heavy with two weeks worth of rubbish. I never cease to be amazed at how devious local authorities can be.

Icemoose wrote:

Recycling containers are provided and many people are TOO LAZY to use them.

Insults, when argument fails, insult the other person.

Icemoose wrote:

As a householder you are responsible for the waste that you create

Er no, my local council has a legal duty to dispose of the waste from my household and to cover this cost it forms part of the council tax charge. I find it interesting that a council employee involved in refuse collection thinks otherwise.

Icemoose

Altarf wrote:

And you have a weekly collection. With a fortnightly collection the bins stink in the summer no matter what you do. Fact.

It’s not a fact, I had a fortnightly collection for over 9 months all through last summer included and my bin never stunk! Neither did I hear my family or my immediate neighbours complaining!

Altarf_ wrote:

So I suppose the National Pest Technicians Association is incorrect when it blames the increase in rats on fortnightly collections.

Never heard of them and personally don’t care about rats anywhere other than in the area I live!

Altarf_ wrote:

So I can expect the this as the next dishonest trick from the council. Introduce fortnightly collections and then say that the bin is too heavy with two weeks worth of rubbish. I never cease to be amazed at how devious local authorities can be.

Insults, when argument fails, insult the other person.

Where I live bins are heavy after one week a lot of the time because of people who can’t be bothered to make an effort to recycle!

Argument didn’t fail, and I still think people who don’t recycle when it’s offered as a doorstep collection are lazy! My views won’t change on this EVER!

Altarf_ wrote:

Er no, my local council has a legal duty to dispose of the waste from my household and to cover this cost it forms part of the council tax charge. I find it interesting that a council employee involved in refuse collection thinks otherwise.

I agree, but you also have a duty to be responsible for your waste! Perhaps you think it’s acceptable to just throw your waste where you wish and because you pay council tax the council will move it, kind of shows immaturity!

Anyway I shall agree to disagree with you on this one!

It comes as no surprise to read last night in the new the UK is the worse at Recycling! Hardly surprising with the attitude of a lot of people!

southernscouser

Lizzieanne

We have a small blue box for glass and tins, a red bag for newspapers (these are collected once a fortnight) and a grey wheelie bin for everything else which is collected once a week. If we want a 'green collection' we have to buy a green bin and pay about £50 a year for a special collection.
Of course, once emptied, the red bags fly about all over the place and most people have lost theirs already.

In addition to this, we have got ourselves a large black plastic dustbin outside the back door that we use for plastics and then take them to the recycling centre ourselves. The only problem is that they will only recycle plastic if it is 'bottle shaped' :rolleyes:
We also take cardboard and garden waste for recycling and are looking into getting a wormery in the near future (we don't have room for a compost bin).

The one major problem we have here is the huge amount of traffic congestion caused by the binmen!!!
We leave our bins on collection days at the end of the driveways, they empty them and push them back in the general direction of the house they came from. The usually end up in the middle of the public footpath or, if you are lucky, slap bang in the middle of the driveway. In the evening when people are returning home from work, they have to leave their cars on the roads to get out and move the bins out of the way - on the main roads this is causing a huge amount of problems. Requests have been made to the council, asking them to put them back where they were left, but no joy so far.

Ms_Chocaholic

We have one large grey wheelie bin for normal non-recyclable rubbish, one green bin for garden waste, a blue bag for newspapers/mags and a green box for tins/cans/bottles. We have alternate weekly collections, one week the grey non-recycl, the other week everything else.

In our area no kerbside collection for cardboard or plastic bottles which we have to take to the local tip.

Have been having a clean out this week though so our non-recycl wheelie bin is nearly full and had to go to tip earlier today to dispose of some of it as would get too full (but I think that's because of tidy up and partly due to all Bank Holidays and lengthy period since last collection).

Wish the Govt would introduce a system where you could get a reduction in your Council Tax for the amount of stuff you recycle.

SusanCarter

Lizzieanne wrote:

The one major problem we have here is the huge amount of traffic congestion caused by the binmen!!!
We leave our bins on collection days at the end of the driveways, they empty them and push them back in the general direction of the house they came from. The usually end up in the middle of the public footpath or, if you are lucky, slap bang in the middle of the driveway. In the evening when people are returning home from work, they have to leave their cars on the roads to get out and move the bins out of the way - on the main roads this is causing a huge amount of problems. Requests have been made to the council, asking them to put them back where they were left, but no joy so far.

My husband has been known to be blocked into our back alley before now due to the recycling and the bin lorry moving down the street at the same time and our house being in between them. The pavement isn't a problem where we are (due to having back alley) but one time I went for a walk with a friend who has two small children and lives in a modern housing estate and where the bins had been emptied we had to push the pushchair along in the road as the bins were in the way. Perhaps if you are finding it to be a problem, you could write to your council and cc the letter of complaint to your MP. I did this once for something else and it worked wonders.

With regard to the original poster, one way of cutting down your waste could be to keep a record of what you throw away for a week or a fortnight and then look at it to see how you could cut down. I intend to do this as I suspect most of our waste is plastic/card/tetrapak packaging which is currently not collected for recycling. I also want to see if there's waste I am producing which could be reduced or reused. I figure if I'm going to write to the council saying they should do kerbside recycling collections for particular things, it will make the point better if I can say this stuff makes up x% of my current unrecycled waste.

Regardless of what any of us think about recycling and a given councils motivation for their waste collection policy, the way I see it, we can make our lives easier by trying to reduce our waste and recycle anything they provide kerbside collection for. Even if you don't care about being "green", reducing your waste will be moneysaving if (as in the original poster's case) your council has limits on how much waste it is prepared to take without an extra charge.

kscour

We (2 adults 2 kids) fill mostly 1 sometimes 2 black bin bags per week, we have a compost bin and a greencone. The local council don't collect goods for recycling in our area yet (fingers crossed to be added to the list this year!) but we take papers/glass/tins to skips at collection point in village. We can't recycle any plastic at all unless they collect it so we try to avoid it as much as possible although our local tescos recycle the bags.
Why we have so much less rubbish to put out than some other local people I don't know - perhaps it's because I cook mostly from scratch, perhaps not, but I do sometimes wonder what's in all their bags especially when I see them at the recycling banks so I know it's not glass/tins/papers etc.