How much do you fill your bin?

Nimeth

We have three bins, food, general rubbish and recycling. Food bin goes out every week fairly full. We fill up both rubbish and recycling as they go out alternately each week, but otoh the recycling bin is much larger than the rubbish one so I think we do ok for just the two of us and a couple of small animals.

Marmite27

Bin day was yesterday, OH emptied the kitchen bin, and left it in the kitchen as he was in a rush. I missed the bin men as I was off work and slept in. When I went to put the black bag that OH had left in the kitchen, the only other thing in the bin was another black bag.

Bin was emptied last week, and was quite full as MIL had a halloween party so had some of the party rubbish in there, as well as 8 decomposing pumpkins, which I was unable to put in the garden waste bin :eek:

We have weekly black (general waste) collections, and 4 weekly recycling collections, garden waste is in some random pattern, so much so that it has to be written on the calendar as I'm not able to remember when it's due it's so random.

I would prefer it as my parents council do, week 1 is general & garden waste, week 2 paper & recycling.

Yes they have 4 bins, but at least their council (Wakefield) takes glass which mine (Leeds) does not. Its beyond me why they don't....

mama67

We have 3 wheelies a 180l (black)for general household, a 240l (grey)for recycling and a 240l (green)for garden inc veg/fruit peelings.

The black and green go out one week and the grey the alternate week; although from end of Nov thru to Mar the green bin is not collected.

The recycling bin is usually full often with cardboard put out alongside if I've had a AF delivery or if we have had a get together a paper potato sack has lots of cans in. This takes, plastic bottles (PET & HDPE), margarine and yogurt pots,all cans, aerosols,all paper and cardboard. I have a flour bag in a tuperware on the kitchen worktop which all the little scrapt bits of paper and can labels go into, then once a week or when its full the bag just goes into the recycling bin.
The green bin is usually 2/3 full as although we do compost some of our stuff we have too much.
The household bin often will go 6-8 weeks between collections unless we have been having a sort out then it could be full.

I also collect up glass, batteries, plastics which can't go in the recycling bin and various other bits which we can take to the council "household waste recycling centre" (tip)

We are 2 adults and 2 teens.

nikki.lizzy.brizzy

Fascinating responses

My council doesn't split different recyclables up which makes it easier for me as everything goes into the one box, though I do sometimes wonder what happens to it after it gets collected. Someone's got to separate it!

notjustlaura

Interesting thread.

I have a 50l bin for non-compost/recycleable items. On average, I half fill it each week. Composting and recycling takes place in common with neighbours so I've no real idea how much I produce.

totallybored

We've just moved to fortnightly collections and we do seem to be throwing away less than before as we were given a food waste bin too.

We have a large wheelie bin for general rubbish and this is emptied every 2 weeks. We only half fill this though (2 adults). We then have a food waste bin which is emptied weekly.

We then have green and blue recycling boxes, of which I have 3 of each (the council give you one of each but allow you to order up to 5 of each). Blue is for paper and is collected on the week that the wheelie bin is done, green is for glass, plastic and cans and is collected on the other week. Then spring until autumn we have a garden bag collection every other week. The council now take plastic food packaging (the tray type that meat comes in) which I find very useful as we previously had to throw this. Once you get used to the food bin this is good too (we are given an even smaller one to keep in the kitchen).

We really don't have much rubbish to throw away at all that can't be recycled somehow. We do seem to be the only people in the street who have adopted the new scheme and everyone else seems to have an overflowing wheelie bin by the end of week one. The only thing that I think the council could have improved on would be a wheelie bin sized recycle bin (my last council had these and they are much easier than boxes) and to collect the recycling every week. We would probably be fine with the normal rubbish only being collected once a month.

carlislelass

We have fortnightly collections. One week is black bin for stuff that can`t be recycled. Alternate week is yellow bag for cardboard, blue bag for paper, red box for tin/ plastic, another red box for glass( about twice a year). From feb until end of nov we have a garden bin .

suki1964

See now reading the replies on here and always have been on fortnightly collections myself, I am at a loss to understand why councils in England are returning to weekly collections

JayJay14

nikki.lizzy.brizzy wrote: »

Fascinating responses

My council doesn't split different recyclables up which makes it easier for me as everything goes into the one box, though I do sometimes wonder what happens to it after it gets collected. Someone's got to separate it!

The waste is usually shipped in trucks to a huge plant where it is loaded onto conveyers, the initial area sort of bounces it and this seperates the cardboard. Then magnets pull out the steel and aluminium is picked up using an elecrical field. Glass by this time is broken and falls as it is heavy. Plastic bags are often pulled out by hand and milk cartons - the white plastic ones - can also be recycled seperately back into more milk cartons. The plants are huge, complicated, noisy and very dusty but the end result is bales of each type of recycling ready to sell on to companies who use them to supplement raw materials. I visited one near Birmingham when I worked in waste management and it was very interesting.

Petlamb

I would struggle to say to be honest - as we don't have an individual bin but rather huge bins for the whole building, as it used to be a pub so pretty sure theyre still using the same ones!

We don't recycle. Yeah, I know... I hate it, as I was totally used to recycling before I moved here - at my parents we have the blue bin/ green bin system and it works pretty well... a lot of this area does have [some] recycling but we dont have those facilities and with no car we cant just drop off our recyclables at a recycling point either