Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

PennysIntoPounds

A home made card and secret buns is a lovely Valentines and has made me smile.
What fun voucher wrangling to be had now you can use four! (Yes I know I should get out more 😁)

ladyholly

I really dont understand why different areas have such radically different rules for recycling. It is way past time it was sorted out. I got really confused when clearing bils house as what they would take and even moe importantly what went in which bin. The local wbsite was equally vague. The only one that I really figured out was the clinical waste bin which they had due to my sisters disability. We dont have those in this area but I asume they would be very useful for parents of young children in disposable nappies especially if they have twins etc. It would stop a lot of the problems that families with very young children have with overfull non recyclable bins have especially in my nearest big city where they are talking about monthly collections for the general waste.

foxgloves

@ladyholly - I wasn't on the Council which dealt with waste collection, but I did enquire about this & it's to do with the different waste companies used by the various local authorities. The company which has the contract in our area only deals with the items I mentioned. Quite a lot of residents had been raising this issue of perfectly recyclable stuff not being collected, yet when the contract expired, it was renewed again with the same company. As all local authorities have recycling targets, this feels a bit like tail wagging the dog. I think if this national strategy IS implemented, then waste processing companies will hopefully have to know they can fulfil it before they bid for the contract. At least the nice household glass bins were an improvement here.
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themadvix

@ladyholly nappies aren’t clinical waste - our neighbours have a bigger wheelie bin because their disabled adult daughter was incontinent - all her waste went in the normal bin. In any case, clinical waste is incinerated, which doesn’t solve the problem. Incineration releases carbon emissions and goodness knows what else (all the chemicals in plastics in aerosol form ) into the atmosphere - whatever the companies that do it might say. The answer is for better education around reusable nappies imo - they were used for centuries by people with far fewer facilities for washing than we have today. But I’m afraid I also doubt their bins are entirely full of nappies - judging by the bins round here, people just buy too much carp without a second thought. 😔

Suffolk_lass

Reflecting on how the reduced collections would affect us, we could manage 3-weekly easily, but 4-weekly or monthly? the recycling bin would not cope and although it is a big wheelie, the extra weight of these collections would, quite honestly, affect the health of the refuse collection gangs. Lots of extremely fit and sturdy forty somethings and fifty somethings.

Those of us who like to recycle what we can, would need a staging area to enable us to use the space more effectively. Meat trays are a bit of a sin here, but the butcher, having used paper for ages, inside plastic bags, had lots of complaints from people about them leaking, so now paper is film backed! At least it produces energy and the local black bin incinerator disposal point has excellent filters on it, recycles all the water, and recovers all they can so less than 1.8% is all that goes to land storage. The recycling plant (all mechanised) is opposite, so a regular delivery of shiny black meat trays that the recycling plant rejects, is a regular 'over to you'. Our facility certainly dealt with all our county's domestic waste and 40% of Norfolk's when our Parish Council visited, just before the pandemic.

Consistency about what is collected would be enormously helpful though.

ladyholly

themadvix said:

@ladyholly nappies aren’t clinical waste - our neighbours have a bigger wheelie bin because their disabled adult daughter was incontinent - all her waste went in the normal bin. In any case, clinical waste is incinerated, which doesn’t solve the problem. Incineration releases carbon emissions and goodness knows what else (all the chemicals in plastics in aerosol form ) into the atmosphere - whatever the companies that do it might say. The answer is for better education around reusable nappies imo - they were used for centuries by people with far fewer facilities for washing than we have today. But I’m afraid I also doubt their bins are entirely full of nappies - judging by the bins round here, people just buy too much carp without a second thought. 😔

Thank you. I am aware that strictly speaking Incontinence products and nappies aren't clinical waste and that it is incinerated but that is how my sisters council dealt with it. With regard to to larger bins if councils start to follow the monthly collection families with young children will not have enough room in their bins even with a larger bin especially if they have more than one child in nappies.  I do agree that people have too much stuff to get rid of. and yes there are many alternatives to disposable nappies (I always used terries) but many women these days are working full time and report they are time poor. I dont know if this is really the case as I worked full time from from the time my dd was 10days old and never had any help from my dh but I only had one child.

I do think that many people need to be educated and understand that we cannot continue to live with the amount of stuff many pople buy and I for one grieve over the amount of plastic I still end up having to buy from the sm. No small local shops round here unfortunately.

foxgloves said:

@ladyholly - I wasn't on the Council which dealt with waste collection, but I did enquire about this & it's to do with the different waste companies used by the various local authorities. The company which has the contract in our area only deals with the items I mentioned. Quite a lot of residents had been raising this issue of perfectly recyclable stuff not being collected, yet when the contract expired, it was renewed again with the same company. As all local authorities have recycling targets, this feels a bit like tail wagging the dog. I think if this national strategy IS implemented, then waste processing companies will hopefully have to know they can fulfil it before they bid for the contract. At least the nice household glass bins were an improvement here.
F

Thank you for the information.

themadvix

@ladyholly I take your point about switching to monthly collections re nappies, I’d missed that element. Around here I believe you can have a separate nappy collection if you need it - or you used to be able to. That would be the equivalent, I guess.

You managed it, and the reusables these days are much easier to work with (I may not have first-hand experience), but I have a friend who used them very successfully for two children, including getting nursery to use them (also, like you, while working full time). They probably aren’t the answer for everyone, but so many people seem to find excuses - as you say, people need to be made aware of the reality we are facing (which I think we’re all more aware of on here).

@Suffolk_lass, I knew you’d be mentioning your incinerator, but I’m afraid I can’t agree that it’s the best solution - the particulates that are released that are causing the most damage (ie hormone disruptors like BPA etc that can cause cancers among other things) won’t even be being measured in all likelihood. 

Can you not take your own reusable containers to the butcher or is it all pre-packed?

foxgloves

We could easily drop down to a single general waste wheelie collection per month as it's often barely 1/4 full for its current fortnightly collection. The recycling wheelie would be more of a challenge. Even though we are allowed to put in a lot fewer types of materials than in other local authorities, we still recycle a lot. I also re-purpose a fair amount of stuff for garden use - plastic trays for seed sowing, yoghurt pots for modules, cut-up spread tubs for plant labels, corrugated cardboard & shredded paper for the worm composter, egg boxes for our compost bins, small plastic bottles for cane toppers, etc.
This is money saving, but does reduce amounts of new plastics being bought when there's plenty already out there which will do the job perfectly well.
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rtandon27

Across the pond, there are many areas that have no rubbish or recycling pick-up.  You need to take your rubbish sacs to the dump (tip) and pay by weight/bag to dispose of them.  It's certainly not cheap.  Recycling in those unserviced areas takes place either at a central depot or at community recycling days were you drive up and sort your rubbish to the relevant areas, and it is then hauled away, at most 4 times a year.

Even in the big city, my mom has her twice yearly moan about having to haul the paint/batteries/scrap metal/ brita filters etc. to the recycling day & then queuing to dispose of them.  The upside is that many people, having nowhere to store it, reduce their consumption and make better consumer choices when faced with the sight of the bags of their own recyclable waste.

Here I'm faced with an OH who begrudgingly takes our glass/tetra etc. to the area of the town parking lot only because he knows that I'll fill a rucksack and walk the10 minute round trip each week if he doesn't fit disposal into our daily runs to the train station.  Our main recycling tip is only a 5 min drive away from home, and yet I have to badger him into taking the items we've collected from the shed. He constantly grumbles about the council needing to make recycling easier & I often wonder exactly what needs to be made easier!

All that to say that in the grand scheme of things, I find sorting and recycling the small amounts of rubbish we produce a fairly easy process, but the OH who lives in the same house and has the same disposal experience does not - it's truly all in one's mindset.

badmemory

My biggest worry about making the bin organisation nationwide is that it will mean that our local one will get worse.