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

eileenfromplaistow

I would guess that tetrapak type cartons are plastic-coated, to make them able to hold liquids. I would certainly be happy to put cereal packets on my compost heap.

Emmysmum_2

cereal boxes are not plastic coated.

Other thoughts for reducing waste: buy bulk sizes of things that you can only get in plastic (veg oil, cheese, that sort of thing). make your own ice cream and ice lollies in summer so no large cartons and plastic tubs in your bin. use loose tea and put used leaves in your green waste bin.use ground coffee instead of instant. This reduces the need to recylce the glass so much, which costs energy too. 1 bag of grounds lasts as long as 3 jars of instant. Not only avoid kitchen roll, but use reusuable containers for storing food. Remember aluminium foil can go in the recycling bin. And back to teh bulk thing..if you are soda buying people, rember that one 2 L bottle uses less bin room than individual bottles. Crush plastic bottles, adn if you buy milk from the supermarket, rinse the jug, leave the cap off, and stomp it flat. leaves you a lot more room. If you have a nearby recycling point for plastic, obviously chcuk everything you can in them.

And I think the non recyclers should be refused a second bin and fined. We are a family of 4 and recylce. Our collection is weekly and our bin is never more than half full, not even at Christmas. I know many councils are eying u the charge for collection by weight for landfill stuff, so you may yet get the last laugh on non recyclers!

SusanCarter

Haven't analysed our rubbish records yet but was just thinking about the issue of composting (i.e. you have no use for compost so a compost heap would not be much use) and have come up with two suggestions:
1) You could create a compost heap and offer the compost to friends/neighbours/freecycle.
2) Perhaps you have a neighbour with a compost heap who would welcome extra stuff being put in it.

Obviously both of those might be completely unrealistic but they're the best I can come up with.

McDuck

dalumsden1 wrote:

In my house crushing bottles has become second nature now. I work in a hospital and sometimes pop some of my domestic waste into the hospital skip. It all goes the same place.

It does, but the hospital will have to pay for disposal.

SusanCarter

I haven't done a full analysis yet of our rubbish as there's a few "mystery" items on the list which I'll have to ask my husband about but here's some initial results/thoughts:

Of 567 things thrown out, 359 were "necessary". By this I mean they were things which were unavoidable due to health or hygiene reasons. For example empty toothpaste tubes, packaging from medication or other things which were used for health reasons. This figure seems excessively high and is probably above average due to my riduclous number of pregnancy related ailments.

Of 208 non-necessary things thrown away, half were plastic with the remainder being card/cardboard, metal, mixed/other and food. Three quarters of this non-necessary waste was kitchen waste.

We are already fairly careful about our waste but based on the results, these are the ways I can see of reducing further:
1) Make sure all packets bought are largest size possible to minimise packaging.
2) Change to milkman so reusing glass bottles instead of throwing out plastic bottles.
3) Buy items in recyclable packaging such as paper and glass as much as possible.
4) Always consider the packaging when purchasing anything.
5) Buy large pots of yoghurt and serve in bowls (or use tupperware tubs for packed lunches) rather than buying individual yoghurts. Could also reduce this packaging by buying plain and adding own fruit.
6) Write to council requesting recycling facilities for plastic, metal, tetrapak and card/cardboard.

Spendless

Thanks Susan & congratulations on your pregnancy :j , not sure what your medical items were, but anything out of date I've always taken to the chemist to dispose of. We had a letter yesterday saying green bin coming soon and it mentioned what cardboard you could and couldn't put in bin. Tetrapaks and cardboard with a waxy coating (still not 100% sure I know what this is ) can't go in, nor can cardboard that has come in contact with food (eg takeaway pizza boxes) but other cardboard can like cereal packets and the wrappers round yoghurts, so I think we'd also be ok with the cardboard boxes that medicines come packaged in too.

I do have a milkman that supplies 1/2 our milk. I get the rest from supermarket cos of cost. I started with milkman when my eldest was little, so I got milk without having to get us both dressed and out of house and to cut down on the "can I have some sweets. a comic etc" costs. With youngest going to f-time school in Sept and not expecting to be using as much milk as I do now I was thinking of stopping milkman but actually I think I'll keep milkman and cut out how much milk I buy at supermarket instead.

I looked at our bin this week and it was 2/3rds full but in that was def stuff that can go in the green bin once we get it, such as the cardboard from the inside of toilet rolls, and there was also several plastic bottles. We are in the middle of having work done on house but once that is sorted we are going to start using our old coal-shed as a recycling station and I'll get a big bin and put plastic bottles in there prior to taking them to recycling centre. Some areas of town are also having a doorstep collection of plastic bottles, so hopefully it will be rolled out across the whole town.

Ken68

Powdered milk is my option, used straight into the cup of tea.
Refills from Tesco. Glass is dangerous.

Smiley_Mum

Charis wrote:

Strange how each council collects different things to reprocess. Ours collects the plastic bottles (but not brown, not empty food containers, not the indestructible plastic shells which electrical goods are packed in). It charges 60p per bag for collecting garden waste, which they admit goes straight to landfill :mad: whilst if you take it in your car to the tip the green rubbish is processed and sold as "soil improver" (complete with dandelion seeds?) The neighbouring council subsidises the purchase of waste disposal units to fit in your sink. That solves the problem of the growing rat population (did you know there are more rats than people in the UK?) tearing holes in your bag as the waste food festers in the height of summer whilst waiting for its by-weekly collection. I wonder what we are supposed to do with the packaging with which large appliances are surrounded ? Huge chunks of expanded polystyrene and corrugated cardboard boxes? Maybe we will have to insist in future that the delivery men unwrap the goods and take the packaging back with them. Bet that will cost us.

As far as I am aware companies/stores at present are legally obliged to dispose of any packaging from products that you buy. May change in future though.

Spendless

Ken68 wrote:

Glass is dangerous.

In what way in case you drop it

Ken68

Spendless wrote:

In what way in case you drop it

If glass was a new material it wouldn't be allowed.
Never rots, can be ground down but then so can plastic.
Danger to children, the elderly and animals. One of the police authorities is calling for plastic beer mugs to cut down injuries in pub fights.
It says a lot for the Glass Lobby that people think it's OK.
And how come milkmen never seem to have a brush handy.