Rubbish!!!

ceridwen

Half a dustbin liner a week - easy! in my case.

Everything good enough to go to charity shop (books, clothing, etc) does.

I dont take any excess packaging in shops - I remove all the supermarket excess packaging in the shop and hand it back to them before I leave the shop (they created the problem - they must deal with it). I rarely buy anything much these days apart from basics like food/cosmetic stuff/cleaning stuff. Magazines my mother passes on to me are passed on, the odd newspaper I buy goes in the recycling bin. Can/plastic bottles/glass/unusable clothing go in Council recycling bins.

Basically all that goes in my dustbin liner is food scraps (not got a proper garden), a few unrecyclable containers, paper with personal stuff on that I've had to tear up or shred.

Used to be 2-3 dustbin liners a week when I bought newspapers regularly and didnt recycle anything. Only envisage a problem when I do intermittent chuckouts - but should be able to "save" up enough Council-issued dustbin liners to cover that - due to only needing half a dustbin liner worth per week.

thriftlady_2

Softstuff wrote: »

Recycling still uses a lot of energy and resources, but using less in the first place really is the key.

Absolutely right :T We've just been given wheelie bins here. The council say if we are 'good at recycling and recycle a lot of stuff we can have another green bin'. Surely if you fill two bins with recycling you are using too much stuff -buying things that are overpackaged, not reusing containers etc.

There are 5 of us.
We keep our compost bin full with all our organic waste. We also shred paper to layer with the veg waste.

We fill a green wheelie bin about 2 thirds full every fortnight -mostly with wine bottles and paper that comes unsolicited through the door. I reuse all jars for preserving.

We fill a grey wheelie bin every fortnight with other refuse. I notice we produce significantly less waste than other (smaller) families in our road.

We take thick card to be recycled at the tip (detergent boxes, Amazon packages etc).

Waste management is a triangle reduce reuse recycle -in that order.

It must be really hard for people like the OP who are a long way from recycling centres. But not using a car is a pretty green thing to do it might cancel out the extra waste you produce

lil_me

If they do this in our area tey will need to significantly improve on recycling facilities. At the minute they don't even recycle plastics etc at the tip. Green waste, cardboard, wood and metal is about all they recycle there up to now.

Cardboard etc goes to the tip but I try to make sure we have a lot to take at once or are passing anyway, like Thriftylady said can sometimes cancel out what you are doing by recycling making several trips.

Glass, tins and paper we have doorstep collection for at the minute, think it's the same at the new house, which I always use. My partner is much less supportive of this and I spend half my time rescuing what is put in the normal bin that can be recycled. He seems to think I am mad. Plastics & tetrapack types would be a big one for me as that is what mst of our rubbish in the household bin is now, if only they recycled it here! Freecycle and charity shops do well out of us, old rags are kept for cleaning, when they get too bad to use in the house DP uses them for car stuff.

I agree also with another point Thriftlady & Softstuff made of part of it is making the effort to have less packaging etc in the first place. I hate being looked at as if I am stupid for not putting fruit and veg in extra bags etc. I've managed to dramatically reduce waste from our house which I am very proud of. Pleased too as I used to have to chase round filling other peoples bins on bin day because mine was over full.

Thanks for the recycle now link, they do the same glass, paper and cans only at the new house, will need to request a bin however as there isn't one there

jackieb

I fill almost 2 wheelie bins a fortnight. Before recycling I filled 2 a week! There are 5 of us here and I got another bin by myself because if the grass got cut it would half fill a bin on it's own.

I recycle everything I can now. We get collections for cans, glass, plastic, paper and card - once a fortnight. Once or twice a week, when i'm going there anyway, I go to the recycling centre at the supermarket. One box isn't enough for our family for all our plastic, tins and glass.

MRSMCAWBER

Hi there

We are really lucky ..we are in Germany at the moment... and the recycling is great..so we only fill half a carrier bag a month for the land fill - and thats only meat bones..from roasts, making stock etc..i put them into a carrier bag in the freezer as i use them and then the night before that bin gets collected i drop it in (saves maggots n flies )...
all our bins are collected fortnightly - we have:-

• a bin for paper - its huge -
• a bio bin..for garden waste peelings etc...which go into paper bags first
• yellow sacks (that are free)that are for tins, plastics,etc-they go down the cellar
• a "restmull" bin - for stuff non recyclable
• Nearly all glass/plastic bottles have REFUNDS on them - they are taken back to the supermarket and posted in a machine which gives you a receipt to hand into the checkout, which gets taken of your bill
• and there are plenty of fabric, glass, shoe recycle bins etc in all the supermarkets. so ours get dropped of when shopping

It is so easy its unbelievable.. yet still here when the "rubbish" bin goes out most of the lids are propped up by bin bags... so i guess they can't be bothered to sort it....

When we get back to the UK it will probably be a bit more hassel but this has shown us just how little we can create..so we will be continuing.... especially if they decide to charge for how much goes to the "landfill"

Justamum

We have on average 1 1/2 50l bin bags a week (sometimes one, sometimes two) and I reckon you could get a couple of those into one black bin bag. There are 5 of us, and I recycle what I can - paper (I even take labels off tins and jars to go with the paper), aluminium, glass, batteries, metal. I put all these into carrier bags and take them to the local tip every couple of weeks. When I remember I take excess plastic bags to Tescos to go in the plastic bag recycling container. Unfortunately we can't recycle plastic or cardboard otherwise we would have very little rubbish. Uncooked food waste goes into the compost bin (which seems to have turned into a giant ant hill, but what the heck the ants are reducing the volume very quickly!). We have very little cooked food waste. Clothes, toys, etc which are grown out of go to the charity shop.

Luckily we still have weekly collections, but sometimes I forget to put the wheelie bin out so it might be a couple of weeks before it gets emptied - but it still doesn't overflow.

moanymoany

We have a recycle bin for paper, plastic bottles and cans. As we only have the free papers and rubbish pushed through the door we are not too bad there. We recycle glass by taking it to the bottle bank.

Our raw food waste is composted and we have very little food waste. Our lodger has increased our rubbish, but only by a little as he is VERY frugal, being mainland Chinese. His weekly washing is 1 pair of trousers, 1 shirt, 1 tee-shirt, 2 pairs undies. Monthly add to that bedding and towel. He doesn't smell, nor does his room. I think he saves between 75% and 80% of his income!!!!! He approves of the way we live, high praise indeed.

So, we are left with about half an ordinary dustbin of rubbish each week and three quarters of a weely bin of recyle stuff every fortnight.

have to say, apart from not collecting glass and greem waste to recycle, our rubbish collection here in Crawley is good. Main rubbish weekly, recycle fortnightly

Little_Miss_Saver

We use 2-3 swing bin liners a fortnight, however we are very lucky with our kerbside recycling.

Black bin collected fortnightly - waste that can't be recycled.
Brown bin collected fortnightly - Garden waste and Food waste.
Recycling boxes x 2 collected weekly - Paper, Card, Glass, plastics, tins, cans, aerosols and textiles.

Our local council are doing loads to encourage recycling and are hoping not to send anything to landfill by 2010 (according to a recent leaflet they sent us when they introduced the "food waste recycling" recently).

Until we moved into the area 2 years ago we threw everything away which I'm ashamed to say but now I'm totally the opposite and will make DS fish something out the bin if it should be recycled :rotfl:

Just wanted to add that I'm very careful with what I buy to make sure that the packaging can be recycled eg used to buy UHT milk but council don't recycle the packaging yet so converted to fresh milk where I can recycle it!!


LMS xx

julesgr

There are two of us here and we have approx one white bag and a small waste liner a week this amounts to approx half a black bag.

Local council collects
Paper/mags/junk mail ,Steel & aluminium cans,glass all go in one box collected fortnightly
garden waste ,they even refused to collect it when i threw in some carrots though they do accept windfall etc! -collected same day as green box
food grade plastic bottles - go with us to Tescos once a month and get recycled there
Clothes and scrap clothing - go to Tescos in the clothing bank.
Cardboard - goes to Tescos

I have spoken to my council on several occasions re food waste, cardboard, plastic etc and all I get is we are looking in to it.


I used to live in a london borough which collected gardenwaste and food waste in one box weekly, food grade plastics, cardboard, glass,paper , cans weekly in another and the "rubbish" on the same day weekly just on a later round. Mum was a 4 bags a week person till they brought in this sytem and with some training she is down to a small bag, 2 recycling boxes and teh food/garden waste box.

If she goes over the boxes she ties a bag to the appropriate box and the bin men pick it up with the appropraite rubbish, empty the bag then return the bag!

Daisydoll

I think I need to get recycling again, I did start to do it a while back but kidof gave up our council only collect normal balck bins, garden waste(only hava yard so don't get a bin for that) and paper(which I don't have a sack for)every other week. The rest I would have to take to local tip. Luckily there is one about 3 mins away by car so don't really have an excuse! I think I'm going to get some recycling bags or boxes and start again. We usually fill our black bin each week and that's me 2 kids and 2 cats(dh in forces so away majority of time)