Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

marionmgcars

Love the blanket,  twice as nice to think it’s made  from small amounts of yarn.  It’s like a free project 👏👏

marionmgcars

I’m with everyone on the low waste.  I often think if everyone had to keep all the stuff they throw away at the bottom of their garden rather than off to landfill it would make everyone think harder, and not waste so much .  

QueenJess

Ah bins… it just reminded me that I’m still irritated with the council. We don’t have wheely bins and the council have been defending that for years saying there are issues with where to put them/an eyesore and environmentally it’s better with our plastic bag allocation (if you want more you have to pay) as people will use less. They’ve now done an about turn and decided to use wheely bins, spending goodness knows how much on them. They did do a survey on it for views, but it was the worst survey I’ve ever seen and done to get the answer they wanted (think the Yes Prime Minister sketch with Bernard if anyone knows what I’m talking about!).

Thing is, we cannot fill a single bin bag for a fortnight between 4 of us. Why on earth would I want a massive wheely bin (that I don’t have anywhere to put) that I couldn’t fill in a million years? I shall be refusing mine and continue to use bin bags. We do have more waste than I’d like, but some of that is DH related who isn’t as dedicated as me in getting things recycled etc. he’s in training…

I often have wondered how others in the street fill 2-3 bin bags per household a week and I’ve concluded it’s a mix of buying far more stuff (most the neighbours parcels come to our house as I work from home) being less bothered about recycling stuff that requires slightly more effort (eg soft plastics you have to take to Co-op/M&S) and food choices that aren’t cooking from scratch that have far more packaging on a per meal basis (they often are harder to recycle as well). There are also a few in the street that never put out their food bins and I doubt they never have waste, so I guess they still put peelings etc in the bin.

foxgloves

Yes, I think people's approach to recycling differs hugely. Re wheelie bins, we have 3 & will soon be receiving a 4th smaller one (optional) as our council is finally rolling out regular kerbside glass collection. This will be useful as our village has no bottle banks & the nearest ones are in town. I don't much like the look of them & apart from garden waste, we could manage with smaller ones. The general waste one is useful now & again for minor bulky items which would otherwise require petrol & a short polluting car trip to the council tip. I think I prefer them to bin bags, however.
The new glass wheelie & the garden waste one are optional here, but the recycling & general waste ones are not. The council rules are that only the wheelie is put out for collection, with the lid down & no side waste or bags, as they won't take these. The only exception is large cardboard boxes which they will take if opened flat & put out next to recycling bin.
F

Cheery_Daff

We don't have a wheelie bin collection, we have a small box for recycling (no glass collection) every fortnight,and blue bags for alternate weeks. They bring our blue bag allocation once a year - we're allowed to put out 4 bags every fortnight, and because we don't do this, we are amassing quite a collection after being here for 5 years 😂 We do quite often use them for carting bulky stuff to the tip (and also we quite often put stuff that normally we'd take to the tip in the blue bags, because it saves a 16 mile drive!)

For recycling, ours will take however much we've taken our - we frequently put out an extra plastic box. I think it's because we're on the 'rural round'- if you're on the main road, you get a standard sized wheelie bin for recycling, whereas ours is less than half the volume, and they don't take glass, whereas they do in the normal wheelie bins. They also don't take food waste from us - but we compost everything anyway (and don't eat meat which makes things easier).

When we first moved, I rang up because we only had one wheelie bin. They delivered (and made us pay for!) the other varieties (recycling, food waste), but then I had to keep reporting for non-collection 🙄 It was 2 months before a guy turned up randomly with a box of blue bags and told us we were on the rural round - nobody in the office knew it existed apparently. They did finally come and take the wheelie bins away and refunded my money! (The one we had when moved here was apparently to store the blue bags in the garden between collections...)

Apologies, please do get back to talking about something other than bins if you'd prefer 😂

rtandon27

Bins are a great topic Cheery! 😉

When we moved in, we were shocked by just how little our local council will cart away in the recycling bin! Limited types of plastic, certain kinds of paper, no glass & no tetra cartons. The only one we produce in large quantities is glass which means hauling it in our car to the local bottle bank.  I grumble on a regular basis about contacting them with a bill for petrol and time that they could knock off the tax bill!

Our green bin had to be ordered and has an extra annual fee for pick up.  Our neighbours, who shun proper gardening and have replaced their lawn with a plastic one, had a loud conversation recently with each other about plant rubbish from one of their planters that they left behind my shed!  Neither of them has the guts to ask politely to use our green bin, so for the 5th time I've moved the dead stuff back to their side of the property line! Anyone else and I'd have offered but they actively discourage all wildlife from their garden other than the one squirrel who I swear they have trained to leave peanut shells in a pile on my patio once they have fed him! - LOL

...and our bin men - sigh - they routinely leave all the bins for about 10 houses on the drive of the lady who leaves for work before they do their rounds!

Such a difference from the days when we lived rurally and everything was picked up by the council or the farm hand!

badmemory

Re the wheelie bins.  They are probably trying to outsource the collection & discovered that all the companies that do it use the type of vehicle that tips the wheelie bin contents into it & are not interested in having to heave bin bags that sometimes split whilst being lifted & leaves a mess that everyone complains about.  Each year we get a breakdown of how much it saves with each type of bin.  So basically the more they get into the other 3 bins (not the grey general rubbish one) the lower they can keep the disposal costs.  The first time they did that was certainly an eye opener.

It is also quite interesting to see on bin day which of your neighbours CBA recycling as their various bins don't go out & when the grey bin does it is bulging.  You are even allowed an extra grey bin if you have nappy type things to dispose of.

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maryb

Interesting to see how councils vary.  On the whole, I think ours is pretty good.  Years ago we weren't supposed to have wheelie bins because they said it encourgaed people to fill them up!  But the black sacks were always being torn open by foxes (we are in one of London's country edges) and the mess was dreadful so they backed down on that. But we have to supply our own They supply food waste caddies and bin, green crates for glass, metal and hard plastic and a black crate for paper.  Garden waste we pay £60 a year for.  None of the non recyclable waste goes to landfil, they send it to a waste for power incinerator.  Which I'm not sure what to think about.  It's better than landfill and they say that they have filters to stop the release of dioxins.  I suppose it means that resources - mainly oil based -  get two uses before being burned to generate electricity

foxgloves

I think bins are one of those topics which get people wound up. I am generally happy with our council's refuse collection system. I just wish that the range of items collected for recycling was wider. The only materials currently collected for recycling by our council are paper, cardboard, yoghurt pots, spread/butter tubs & plastic bottles of the shampoo, washing-up liquid, mineral water, tomato food variety. It's frustrating knowing that there are so many types of plastics which CAN be recycled & are even labelled with a code, but the contract the have with the waste contractor only allows for these items. Glass, as I mentioned before currently has to be taken to bottle banks so that is a car trip for anyone from our village unless they take a few jars at a time in a bicycle basket. The glass recycling bins are being delivered this autumn I think, although households which don't want them can opt out. The only paid-for service is the garden waste wheelie which is a fortnightly collection apart from December, Jan & Feb when it's monthly & only costs £35 per year, which I think is a very good service. We do have 5 compost bins in the garden & a worm composter but also make very good use of the garden waste wheelie for harder-to-compost stuff like hedge cuttings, tree prunings as well as the sort of perennial weeds our garden composters don't get sufficiently hot enough to kill off. When we were clearing our parents' house ready for putting it on the market a few years ago, I was amazed at the range of materials which could go in that council's recycling wheelie.....washed foil, cling film, stretchy plastic, flower-pots, food trays.....a much more comprehensive range that collected by our council here. 
F

foxgloves

And good afternoon everybody.......(no bins in this post, promise!)
Sunny day with a breeze makes me wish I'd put a load of laundry on for free drying. Never mind, can do it tomorrow.
As planned, today has been a stay-at-home outdoor jobs day, although my jobs did lead to a couple of hours spent on kitchen witchery. Did garden pickings first thing: Courgettes, blackberries, just under 0.8kg french beans & 3.5 kg tomatoes. Decided tomatoes were the sort of quantity which required dealing with, so skinned, de-seeded & chopped them, asked Mr F to reach me the cauldron (as it's known in our house) down & turned them into 5 containers of tomato sauce base - a Carluccio recipe which is very basic  - just tomatoes, onion, garlic, olive oil (if you want to take out the 2nd morgtage currently required to buy it) & fresh basil leaves - but that is kind of the good thing about it, because it can be eaten simply as it is with some pasta & cheese or it can be used as the base for other dishes such as meatballs, lasagne, anything which requires a nice tomatoey base. Anyway, with a bit of freezer tetris, Mr F has managed to find a space for it. With today's sunshine, I think I will need to do another tomato pick on Monday. Next recipe will be a double batch of a favourite chutney.
Started off this year's seed saving with the first seeds of the season - have saved some from that gorgeous freebie frilly pink poppy which popped up in our front border 2 or 3 months ago. 
A good bending & stretching session cutting back & weeding a section of the biggest flower border. The weeds are shocking......it is all the rain that has brought them on. Also, since the boundary hedge was replaced with neighbour's new fence, the bindweed has been staging a worse-then-usual takeover bid because it is getting more light & moisture. I will gradually remove it all. At least I can get to the roots now that they are not obscured by dense hedge. I'll make sure that bed has a proper good dig-over once I have got it cleared.
Well, that is my jobs for the day. I am going to read my book now as I'd like to sort a bag of library returns for the coming week. Probably watch a film tonight, so will crochet some squares for Ash's new blanket too otherwise I will fidget or fall asleep! Mr F is constructing his latest WW lamb & marrow bake which has taken care of an enormous courgette. 
Enjoy your weekend all, & keep your mitts on your money,
F x