It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

Katiehound

It's very very frustrating that different councils allow different things in different coloured bins!

When I say to my friend the 'green bin'..oh she says you mean rubbish! No, I mean garden waste
Oh that's brown! My rubbish bin is black.
My general recycling is grey (no, they didn't want blue-too showy!!)
My paper recycling has a purple lid except I gave my bin away- no room.
Food waste bin? what's that!!!!!!

and I still can't put in soft plastic or black food trays!!

Even our really small Co-op stores- national & local have soft plastic bins so I think this must be a national scheme.
Other supermarkets- might only be the large shops

and for anyone in ROI you can put any kind of plastic in the bins in Tesco. Very handy

GaleSF63

tooldle said:

Agree with the above. We’ve had vacuum packed beef and pork mince from local supplier, for at least 3 yrs. I take the washed plastic to our local coop. Mince packed this way needs a bit more bashing to break it up. Change is necessary to get us to net zero.

Some vacuum packed foods that come in a slab can be broken up more easily by cutting a slit to let the air in then flexing the packet with your hands to separate the contents. Then it should come out easily and broken up.

newlywed

Thanks @Katiehound I will check next time I am in coop… if I go there it’s often a quick dash and exit as soon as possible so May have missed it.

we don’t have many bread type bags in any case as prefer bakery bread that comes in paper bags.

euronorris

Here is the list of no-no's in the recycling boxes for us:


For a long time we didn't have any option for recycling soft plastics locally as the supermarkets stopped taking them. I believe some have started again, but I'm not convinced that they are actually getting recycled as claimed. We have a local reduce, reuse, recycle facebook group on there and when they pressed the supermarkets, they weren't able to get a proper answer as to what actually happens with all of the soft plastics taken to them. Indeed, there were incidents in the past of such waste being shipped off to landfills in other countries.

So I'm quite wary of green washing, and not entirely convinced that this move from Sainsburys is as ethically sound as it's proclaimed to be. I remain skeptical in that regard. And honestly, I think that a better option all round is for all supermarkets to reintroduce butcher counters like those of the past where we take our own reusable and easily washed containers to be filled with whatever meat, poultry, fish we would like.

On a personal note, I rinse all of our 'wet' recycling (ie anything that contained wet food). But I'm afraid I don't have the time to be giving every container a full wash. And with a dishwasher doing most of our dishes, I rarely have a sinkful of dishwater to use for that purpose to limit wasted water. We have 3 stackable recycling containers in our house, that I have labelled accordingly and it all goes in there until Sunday evening when I put them into the council recycling boxes to be emptied early on a Monday morning. We bought these when we moved in, and they are still going strong, though I do have to give them a scrub occasionally. Our house is a coach house, with everything on the first level and it gets very hot in our kitchen, especially in the summer. It only takes a tiny morsel of something left on packaging to start causing a stink. And it really doesn't take long for the food bin to start smelling if any chicken is put in there. So it's not uncommon for me to have to take them outside mid week. So on that basis, I am also not keen on retaining soft plastic packaging which has contained meat/poultry/fish for more than a couple of days.

So, for me personally, I just don't see the packaging as an improvement.

newlywed

Found a good list of the plastic numbers..

https://plasticoceans.org/7-types-of-plastic/

Floss

Soft plastics are easily recycled at most major supermarket - I take mine to big Tesco as there is a collection cage by the entrance with a drop-off lay by. My DiL brings hers up North from their home in Newham council as its easier to do.

Slinky

newlywed said:

@Slinky… you froze rodents????

They were dead!  Yes, it seemed the better of the option of having them rotting in our black bin in the height of summer for two weeks. They were completely separate from any food in a spare freezer.

YoungBlueEyes

Pollycat said:

YoungBlueEyes said:

You please yourself in your own kitchen. But don’t deliberately misconstrue my posts to be argumentative, as you’ve done here. 

Then try not to be a bully by attempting to put me in the wrong.
As you've done here.
I've been very clear on my stance on this.
Accept it.

Your bolding.

"Accept it"? Block it more like.

YoungBlueEyes

Ditto here for different coloured bins, that's another thing that varies by council apparently. I had to keep changing my post to say "recycling bin" rather than 'blue bin' cos I know they aren't all blue ha haa!

I'm not sure I like your post @euronorris cos I was quite happy believing it went to recycling from their receptacle! I haven't seen anything about them banging it in landfill

@newlywed my co-op has the soft plastics bin just outside the door, saves me going in at all and spotting something over-priced that I didn't need tempting with  

ladyholly

Our recycling goes in open boxes. No problem except when they are out on windy days when I get half of other peoples content right outside our back gate. The councils answer is they sell nets to cover the boxes. That would be fine if it was our recycling but I stack the boxes with the food bin weighting the rubbish. They choose not to understand the problem and I end up with a box full of other peoples recycling leaving little room for ours.