About to change from weekly to fortnightly collections-any pointers?

Spendless

Thanks everyone some excellent advice :j and things I hadn't considered.

The landfill bin is a wheelie bin and so is the green garden waste/thin cardboard that we are getting.

Our meat is bought from the butchers stalls (I live in a big market town), so don't get many trays but good point about rinsing the blood away of what we do get, as was wrapping food scraps in newspaper. By chance an empty large pizza box:o has got wedged at the bottom of our bin and has been providing a good base for keeping it clean. I'll remember to keep something like this at the bottom always. Filling juice cartons with rubbish to save on space is also an excellent idea I hadn't thought of :T .

I might have to introduce 2 bins in our rooms but finding space for 1 bin in some of our rooms is a problem, so I'll see how the family get on with the fortnightly collections first.

SusanCarter

Try keeping a record of everything you throw away for a fortnight. That way you can see clearly what waste you are producing and consider how it can be reduced. We are in the process of doing this (today is the last day of recording) and then I am going to go through it and work out what we can reduce. I think the main change we will make will be in terms of considering the packaging when purchasing rather than changing our usage of things as we already try not to be too wasteful. So far one thing we have decided is to buy tomato ketchup in the glass bottles rather than the plastic ones so that they can be recycled in our green box. (I would have to drive ~16 miles each way to recycle plastic bottles.) I've also realised that using solid soap rather than liquid soap produces less waste as you just have a small paper/plastic wrapper rather than a big plastic bottle and it lasts much longer so you produce less packets.

Spendless

SusanCarter wrote:

Try keeping a record of everything you throw away for a fortnight. That way you can see clearly what waste you are producing and consider how it can be reduced. We are in the process of doing this (today is the last day of recording) and then I am going to go through it and work out what we can reduce. I think the main change we will make will be in terms of considering the packaging when purchasing rather than changing our usage of things as we already try not to be too wasteful. So far one thing we have decided is to buy tomato ketchup in the glass bottles rather than the plastic ones so that they can be recycled in our green box. (I would have to drive ~16 miles each way to recycle plastic bottles.) I've also realised that using solid soap rather than liquid soap produces less waste as you just have a small paper/plastic wrapper rather than a big plastic bottle and it lasts much longer so you produce less packets.

What a great idea :T . I'm going to do this. Would you mind posting any other ideas you have when you sort thru your rubbish on what can be reduced or used instead.

Nenen

Spendless wrote:

I've identified that I'm using kitchen roll too often and am going to change to j-cloths that I'll wash. Any help appreciated.

I've been hooked on microfibre cloths (instead of J cloths) since reading about them on this site. They absorb far more and can be washed and reused many times more than J cloths too.

Another tip to reduce waste is to buy concentrated goods as much as possible, e.g. fabric conditioner (so you get smaller containers). If you read the 'old style' board they have loads of good ideas for cleaning stuff using far fewer products and hence less different packaging.

Good luck:beer:

lovelyjubbly

Hi there, you say that you only have a lawn and no garden so a compost bin would not be any good, but do you have pot plants? as the compost could be used for them, or grow some potatoes in a plastic dustbin, just adding the compost as the potatoes grow, you can get a huge crop that way, or strawberries in one of those pots that has holes in the sides for the plants! any way we put all our kitchen waste in the compost bin, and all the used kitchen towel/tissues, grass cuttings and shredded mail, it rots really well so keeps going down, we dont empty it as such, just shovel it out from the hatch at the bottom when it has turned to soil, our wheelie bin only goes out about once every 6-8 weeks as we dont have much to throw away and we tie up the black bag when it is full and get our wellies on and stomp on it before it goes in the wheelie bin, that way it only takes up half the room!
every little tip helps!

Missy79

Any particularly "moist" food leftovers go down our downstairs loo - very handy. Dryish food shouldn't be a big problem for two weeks, but old bread or veg bags would be good for those bits and peices that could start rotting. No extra waste or space taken and you can't recycle them anyway unlike newspaper.

phizzimum

Filling juice cartons with rubbish to save on space is also an excellent idea I hadn't thought of :T .

[/QUOTE]

My grandma always did this (old school not green) so it's something i've always done although other people think it's strange. in fact i was in two minds whether to post it as a tip or not so glad u found it useful!

eileenfromplaistow

Only just caught up with ths thread, so here's my sixpenneth!
A few months back, Tesco was selling Heinz Ketchup CHEAPER per 100ml in the small glass bottles than in large plastic(particularly upside down bottles).
In a small garden I would use a wormery, as the soil and liquid are great for potted plants, and it is clean and not smelly.
I try to buy products in cans and glass rather than plastic (such as custard and sauces)
Small plastic or plasticised containers are kept by the sink for used teabags and food scrapings, then binned (oops, teabags go in the compost).
All padded envelopes are kept and a piece of paper stuck over the old label.
All loan company etc return envelopes likewise, used for competitions and general correspondence. Stuck down they make an OK postcard.

margaretclare

Hi

A lawn but no garden....but it would be possible to grow things in pots and containers, so making compost would be useful for that. It's possible to grow a few things in a tiny space - see the RHS site http://www.rhs.org.uk/vegetables/index.asp

Also https://www.suttons.co.uk - they have suggestions for veg that can be grown in containers - potatoes, salad crops, a lot of things like that. Also what about hanging baskets?

Margaret

Spendless

I don't have any plant pots, only 1 house plant that I reluctantly acquired as a pressie last December, and the only reason it's been kept is I like the plant pot it's in . Not very green fingered I'm afraid, but it's something I will keep in mind.

I've had conversations about going on to fornightly collections with my neighbour (family of 3) who moaned "but my bin is full every week", but when I asked if she used her green box said no :wall: and another with a friend who has just gone onto fortnightly collections, who has asked the council for an extra bin, which they seem to have agreed to as they are a family of 5 but when I asked her she wasn't recycling anything either :mad: .

A lot of the town is cross about going to fortnightly collections, but if people aren't recycling with weekly collections I can see why the council is going to fortnightly to make them change. I'm also as mad as hell if someone who isn't recycling gets an extra bin.

Can someone also tell me the thin cardboard that can go in,it says not if plastic coated, what counts as plastic coated. The friend wanting the 2 bins says cereal boxes and the cartons youghurts are in, are plastic coated cardboard, is that true.