Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

badmemory

Our general waste, bottles & paper are 3 weekly, food & garden every 2.  So a six week cycle.  Thankfully you can sign up for email reminders, which also remind you about closed lids.  So far no charges but we will see how long that lasts.

joedenise

We have to pay for a garden waste bin - it was £59 last year, haven't heard how much it will be this year yet but wouldn't be surprised if it goes up again!  We can recycle most things except soft plastics, batteries and textiles.  Soft plastics and batteries we take to the supermarket and textiles get taken to the tip when we have other stuff to take as we have to book an appointment to use the tip which is a pain.

Our food waste is collected weekly and our general waste and recycling alternate weeks.  Garden waste bins are collected the same week as general waste every 2 weeks throughout the year apart from the Christmas/New Year weeks so 25 times a year.

Lids must be closed or they won't collect but if you have excess recycling you are allowed to use a box by the side of the bin for the excess.  Everything goes in the same bin and is sorted elsewhere.

Like others we recycle as much as we can and the recycling bin is usually much fuller than the general waste!

KajiKita

I may be wrong but I thought I heard mutterings that this government are starting to look at a united, coherent recycling strategy across all councils …? It’s about time! 🤔

KK

Baileys_Babe

KajiKita said:

I may be wrong but I thought I heard mutterings that this government are starting to look at a united, coherent recycling strategy across all councils …? It’s about time! 🤔

KK

This is something I would support but it needs to modelled on the best current practice or better.

themadvix

Baileys_Babe said:

KajiKita said:

I may be wrong but I thought I heard mutterings that this government are starting to look at a united, coherent recycling strategy across all councils …? It’s about time! 🤔

KK

This is something I would support but it needs to modelled on the best current practice or better.

Agreed.

No garden waste charges here, but they are all around us (all parents and sister in neighbouring council areas), so likely it will come. If it weren’t for cat litter we wouldn’t put our general waste bin out more than once a year - I get so cross when I see them overflowing! And the council take them, even though they aren’t meant to (lids down rule here too). Grr! Plastics, glass, metal card and tetrapaks taken here (although I doubt very much the latter are recycled). Food waste goes in our garden waste bins. We take the very few soft plastics to T’s and all the rest to the dump for recycling - we have a small tin in our utility room that collects assorted items and only go when we’ve got other bits to take. The dump is the most depressing place in the world - always so much being sent to landfill that could be rehomed with a bit of effort. What I get cross about is that you can’t offer to take something off someone’s hands there - the workers won’t let you!! But it’s ok for them to take stuff and sell it to the public at their ‘Reuse’ shop 😡 Great they have a shop, but entirely missing the point I feel. 

Suffolk_lass

Everyone here (in our village) seem to be pretty good about their bins (we do have to check what the binfluencers have put out  so we copy them though). Currently alternating black and blue (recycling, all except glass). There is a charge for garden bins which have their own collection cycle on a different day, but we don't need it. Our gardener takes it to a burn pile if we are not composting it.

My Mum is one of the SW Scotland boroughs, has a green (coloured) bin for general waste (which doesn't work in my brain where it should be for green waste) and brown for garden (for which she pays), and then she has a stack of front opening boxes so they sort their own rubbish. I like the boxes but if the collections go to three weekly, they won't be big enough

Her dustman collect it from her drive as she is old registered vulnerable.

Our dustman take the quantity we put out, however much, despite rules about lids closing - and it's why they get lots of Christmas boxes!

Makingabobor2

@KajiKita, I have heard rumours of that as well. Also that ALL councils will start food waste collections from April, but so far not seen anything to confirm that. 
Our council will take tetrapak & yoghurt pots, my sister's 150mls away, won't. So we bring home massive bin bagsfull when we visit. 

foxgloves

Well, I have just read all your comments & contributions & my diary seems to have turned into Bin Central!! More of that later...

@themadvix - Your cat toy sounds much better than the weeble mouse. Yes, Soot worked out extremely quickly that if he tipped it & held it at the correct angle with one paw, he could simply use his other paw to scoop the biscuits in the direction of his mouth. It was therefore a biscuit dispenser, rather than offering any play value.

@DawnW - Yes, I always feel that way about seeds sprouting. Another 2 chillies popped through this morning.

@Makingabobor2 - Good idea to add new messages to your cards. Yes, Mr F is adamant that he isn't interested in being one of these partners who only shows romantic gestures on one day a year. We do like seasonal activities so we always do something, but usually low-key & we don't buy any associated naff plastic tat.

And now onto bins. yes, I have also heard that it is the Government's intention to introduce a national recycling standard so that all local authorities will collect the same materials. That will be a great improvement here. It wasn't really until we were clearing out my parents' home ready to put it on the market that I realised how poor our local system is. Mum & Dad could put much more stuff in their recycling wheelie - clean aluminium foil, flower pots (not the black ones which the machine couldn't 'see'), plastic food trays, any tins inc biscuits tin type, cling film, glass, heaps of stuff. Here, the only stuff we can put in our recycling bin is paper, card, tins (only the food & drink type), butter/spread tubs & yoghurt pots and plastic bottles. It doesn't matter if we have a plastic container which is clearly stamped with a code for a plastic type which is perfectly recyclable, the contractor used by our local council sorts by hand & only takes 'types' of item, rather than types of plastic. As they needed to improve recycling rates & district residents were complaining, they rolled out glass recycling wheelie bins last year. They are half-size bins & are collected every 6 weeks. There's no charge for them & they are optional but it looks as though most people around where we live have opted to have them. Apparently, the council has received feedback from the firm to whom they sell the waste glass that our glass collections are good quality with very little contamination from incorrect materials. The recycling wheelie is another matter. The council reminded everyone yet again recently about what can actually go in the bin & the list of what must NEVER go in was eye-opening, as included dog poo, nappies & stuff which just shows that there are a lot of households which just don't give an ess aitch eye tea about the purpose of recycling. There is no local food waste collection.
The only bin for which we are charged is the garden one. That's gone up slightly this year but at £38 a year for 2 collections a month from March to Oct & 1 a month in the Winter months, I think it is good value. We compost the majority of green waste at home as have 5 bins & I also do 'chop & drop' & have a worm composter, but the garden waste wheelie is good for the pernicious stuff which won't break down sufficiently at home compost temperatures (bindweed, hawkweed, bramble) as well as seed heads for spready stuff & woody prunings.
We have to be able to get the lids down on all our bins too or they are allowed to leave them unemptied. No side waste is allowed with the sole exception of flattened-out carboard boxes which may be left by the wheelie recycling collection day.
One thing which REALLY annoys me is when manufacturers print on their packaging that is is 'recyclable'. This is one piece of green-wash skank which will hopefully be better addressed when we have a UK standard materials collection scheme. We do take cat meat pouches, stretchy plastic & crisp packets to the collection bin in our local Co-op but until we can ALL put things like food trays (which we avoid as much as possible), tetra packs, aluminium (other than drinks cans), etc, in our council bins, then the manufacturer's 'recyclable' label is pretty much pointless.

Anyway, that's my contribution to the bins debate!
F x

foxgloves

And now for today's post. Useful, pleasant enough day. Feels chilly despite the heating coming on quite a lot today, so indoor temperatures have obviously been dropping below 18.5 degrees to keep triggering the boiler on. Right, budget-friendly activity as follows:
*Mixed up a sourdough for baking tomorrow.
*Made dough for tonight's pizza & a small batch of rolls.
*Daily house care hour: Cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed downstairs, emptied bins & changed household linens.
*Finished making Valentine's card. I think it looks pretty nice, but it would have been a little better had used better glue, instead of insisting on using up some wretchedly ancient stuff in order to get rid of another piece of clutter. 
*Baked the Beloved a tin of jam buns (that traditional recipe which everyone of a similar vintage to myself will have learned to make at school) because they are one of his absolute favourites & he was going on about them at the weekend.....& the weekend before that too, if I remember rightly. He doesn't know I've baked them. I have put them in a cake tin but have made a red heart label to tie on. Last of the big St. Valentine's Day spenders there, then!
*Did a couple of surveys - both long ones.
*Mr F has just pinged to say he's on his way to pick up the shopping on his route home. He was going through various loyalty vouchers first thing as apparently the system has changed & customers may now use 4 vouchers instead of 2. They were all for items which are on our grocery list so that will knock a bit off the bill & he will not be saying no to the free coffee.
Right, time to make the place cosy for the evening ahead. I also need to think whether I need to go into town tomorrow when I will have access to the wheels.
Love F x

Makingabobor2

Another productive day by the sound of it.  hope Mr FG likes his jam buns, think I do remember making them at school. 
Just another thing on the recycling debate.  A lot of zero waste refill shops are collection points for very odd things that we can recycle, our local (well 11 miles away, but I still go once a month) one, takes old printer cartridges; any sort of writing implement...so pens, marker pens, felt tip pens etc; old plastic loyalty cards/debit cards etc; old makeup items, and also old bras for sending to 3rd world countries.  Think all but the bras are sent to Terracycle, which has great recycling, but it is often difficult to find a collection point locally.  You can I believe, have your own box and collect, but think you have to pay for the box.  Also Gillette will send you a free envelope to fill with any sort of old razors/blades etc and send back to them for recycling, FOC, just order it online.