How much do you fill your bin?

GreyQueen

We don't have bins as there is nowhere to put them in this block of flats so we just have black sack collections with no recycling collections.

On single woman = 1 carrier-bagful of rubbish per week. Takes me about 6 weeks to fill a black sack.

I take the "rot-ables" (veg peelings, teabags etc) to a compost bin on my lottie, recycle tins, plastic bottles, paper and card via on-street bring banks and save up jars until I have about 20 and then offer them on Freecycle. They always go.

Mum found out last week in converstation with an egg-seller that they are paying the wholesaler about 20p for a dozen-size cardboard egg carton so were glad to be the designated recipients of clean ones for re-use. You can always offer them on Freecycle as sometimes hen-keepers want them.

Interesting to compare our experiences...........

ETA; the parental household is 3 adults and 2 cats and their council does alternate weekly collections. The wheelie bins are 240 litres and the recycling bin is 3/4 full every fortnight and the general waste bin holds 2 black sacks per fortnight. Compostables are composted in the back garden. They also live near a household waste site and take stuff like dud electricals etc up there for recycling. Tetra-Paks also go there as the council doesn't want them in the recycling. Batteries are recycled at the supermarket. Any excess carrier bags in clean conditon are wanted by the charity shops in town. There is also a textile recycling bank up there for industial wipes so any knackered clothes go in there.

Anything unwanted but re-usable by someone else is first offered in the family then c.s or Freecycled (the latter usually brokered by moi).

thriftwizard

We still have a rubbish collection weekly and "Green Box" recycling fortnightly. There are between 5-9 adults living in this house (some of them only technically adult, or adult-sized!) hence we have two Green Boxes, but generally only put out one black bag a week. But we also run two big compost heaps, a Green Cone digester for the stuff you can't put on a compost heap and our 10 chickens eat a lot of scraps, whatever DEFRA think they should be eating - they are foragers & scavengers by nature.
I sometimes suspect that when a certain young man, who currently works in the local newsagent & is addicted to all things sugary, gets around to leaving home, our refuse offerings will halve...

seafarers_wife

I have 3 bins for recycling and a glass box. household rubbish, recycling (takes all plastics, paper, etc) and garden waste bin. household rubbish is taken one week and the next its the rest.

when its just me and the cat I usually fill 2 bin bags a week and dont put much in the garden or the glass bin. recycling bin depends on what ive been buying, but usually its about half full when put it out.

When DH is home, its a full bin for household waste, recycling and glass bin and I dont know why. It might be that he doesnt flat pack stuff or recycle properly or it might be that we buy more when he is home and do more DIY etc so have more rubbish to throw away.

squeaky

And also... My land fill rubbish challenge

suki1964

Its amusing to see the posts from those who have husbands working away from home. Mine also works away and when he comes home, suddenly the bins are full and a trip to the tip is required

LameWolf

Thankfully we still have weekly collections!

We are a household of two (DH and me) and the occasional canine guest, as I'm a host for a dog-sitting service.

We have a green wheelie (don't know the size - not huge) for food and garden waste, a blue box for glassware, a pink sack for paper, plastics and metal tins, and a black sack for everything else.

We really only use the wheelie for garden waste, so it only really gets put out when we've cut the lawn or swept up a lot of leaves. We are a veggie household, so no meat bones etc, and veg waste (peelings, cores, coffee grounds, tea leaves etc) goes in the compost bin at the bottom of the garden. In the nine and a half years DH and I have been together, I have yet to have food left on a plate to throw away.:)

The blue box probably gets put out every 3 or 4 weeks, when there's enough glassware to warrant it. (We eat a lot of Marmite and pickled onions, and enjoy wine at home).

I put a pink sack out virtually every week, and the black sack takes me usually three, sometimes four weeks to fill enough to be worth putting out. I don't have to worry about smells, as it's not getting "mucky" food rubbish put in - the dirtiest thing is the contents of the Dyson!:D

We refuse "extra" packaging whenever possible - we use cloth shopping bags, or if buying a single item, put it straight in my wheelchair carrier bag; we buy our fruit'n'veg at the market, so most goes straight in our cloth bags, and things like mushrooms or toms go in a recyclable paper bag, so really, we don't get much rubbish.

Lazy_Liz

Very interesting all the differnt recycling/collection systems the various councils use. We have weekly collection of blue bin bags, not in a blue bag...no collection. The we have green wheely bins for garden rubbish and a green box for glass, cans and paper but we take all our recycling to the village collection site as the school get money for every tonne recycled. The site takes cans, glass paper carboard including corrugated, tetra packs, plastic bags, all other plastics except polystyrene. There is also a clothing bank. We collect batteries in a pot and then take them to the supremarket, old electricals and very large rubbish goes upto the main council recycling site where you can get rid of all manner of things, like engin oil, wood, rubble etc.
I compost most of our garden waste and all the veg pealings from the kitchen (these cannot go in the green bin) and use the green bin for overflow and things that don't compost well at home like connifer clippings.
We reuse plastic bags from the supermarket for poo bags and the waste in our blue bags is mainly things like dental floss, cottonwool and poo bags and non recyclables. There is about half a bag a week for 2 people and a dog.

PixieDust

I chuck our Dyson contents on to the side garden (all mud and weeds - basically a huge compost heap, if you will.....we have plans for it.....soon...when pennies allow) along with peelings and compostables. We do have a compost bin....but I am, frankly, lazy and bored of wrestling with its cantankerous lid.....so these days I cut out the middle man.

Raw meat waste - fat, bones, fur, feathers, go out to the ferrets for first dibs....anything they leave is bagged and binned, but there isn't a lot

Ferret waste is dumped under a tree in the garden along with its woodshavings....that ground is never used to grow anything but the tree, and I believe the smell of the waste (which is, frankly, the least smelly thing about the critters!!!) deters the rats and mouselings. The cats haven't brought us a "present" since we had the ferrets, so my theory seems sound enough.

Dog waste is bagged and binned.
Paper is all recycled, and although we don't buy papers, the junk mail and flyers and envelopes that we get seems to fill a carrier bag each fortnight easily.
Clothes are put out in one of the never ending free plastic bags that are pushed through the door.
Card is torn up and binned as our c!rappy council dont collect it
Glass is collected fortnightly
Tins are collected fortnightly
Carrier bags are either used for lining small bins upstairs or are returned to A$da
Plate scrapings are offered to dog and cats, with any rejects being binned

My HUGE bugbear is plastics. Huger than huge. Ginormous in fact. Our council have supposedly been running a trial for however long in the area to collect and recycle this from certain streets, with the intention that a boroughwide collection is instigated in Spring 2011. So WHY is my bin still being put out each week almost exclusively full of plastics? So annoyed. Really. :mad:

We are allowed to put out 3 bin bags each week; on a normal week we put out two - we are 2 adults and 2 children.

Mostly full of ruddy s0dd!ng plastic :mad:

topbargainhunter

We have a black wheelie bin for non-recycled stuff and a brown bin for garden waste, these are emptied fortnightly in rotation. We also have 3 boxes for glass, paper & card, and plastic & tin. These are emptied weekly. The plastic and tin box is always overflowing and everything blows down the street on windy days.

We don't often fill our brown bin as we have a very small garden, and in the black bin we only have about 2 or 3 carrier bags of waste per fortnight, as most stuff can be recycled. There are only 2 of us in the household.

russetred

I recycle everything I can up here and my bin goes out once a month.