Unless you happen to be Kermit or Martle ...

Ahem. Anyway, as the Night Before Bin Day rolls around again I found myself thinking 'How come it always seems to be Monday?'. Although I sort as I go during the week, Monday still finds me at the sink washing cans, cat food pouches, carefully peeling off labels from jars/tins (paper must be separate from containers) and then worrying whether I can put the tops from milk containers in the recycling bin (some plastic isn't acceptable). I do study containers for symbols/letters that indicate they can be recycled but often there is no indication. So it goes in with the rubbish (along with a feeling of guilt).

Aside from the fact that I probably spend more time washing stuff to be recycled (we are told we must wash-and-squash) than I spend on washing plates etc., I feel that we aren't given clear guidelines on what is unacceptable for recycling. It's all very hit and miss. The binmen are none the wiser, they rummage and then just chuck stuff on the garden The guidelines issued by this Council are very much open to interpretation, although perhaps that varies from Council to Council.

What really bugs me is that some Councils are absolutely draconian in their attitudes to recycling and are issuing punitive fines to residents for what may have been a simple mistake due to lack of guidance.

Any thoughts?

Don't get me started, Mort.  It's a disaster round here.  The things you can't recycle are, to be fair, pretty clearly listed in the literature but they include lots of the packaging that's in daily use in the area where I live - tetrapacks, microwave/ready meal trays, foam inserts etc etc.  It doesn't really apply to me but I still have to live with the consequences of the halving of collections for the only bins anyone ever fills.  You could say people should learn to change their habits but I think it would make more sense to put pressure on the retailers to stop selling produce in these containers.

I say it doesn't really apply to me because I've always been a low-waste consumer.  I buy loose veg, fish from the stall, grains & pulses in simple bags (either sealed or from the local weigh'n'save store).  And I've washed tins, bottles etc for decades - not, I should say, because of any particular green agenda but as a habit picked up when living in flatlets/bedsits which would smell pretty badly if one threw tins etc straight in the pedal bin and left them for any length of time.

Perhaps the biggest irony is that since I moved here about 5 years ago I've been taking my paper/glass waste to the public recycling banks on a regular basis.  Shortly after they introduced the alternate standard/recycling rubbish collections someone deemed these banks to be redundant and they were removed.  I now have to carry my papers and bottles half a mile - ironically to the supermarket, which still has the facilities - or put out my recycling bin every fortnight filled to about 10% of capacity and risk somebody compromising it by putting inappropriate stuff in it while I'm away. 

Our council has it pretty much organised, though there's one oddity which we're still fighting over: for some reason they won't collect shredded paper. Magazines and newspapers are fine, but not the shredded stuff, of which we seem to have ever increasing amounts. Surely it should be actually easier to process if it's already presented in small bits?

This reminds me irresistibly of "leaves on the line". Here in Waltham Forest we have insanely complicated regulations about what can be recycled, which turns out to be a fairly small proportion of the rubbish we generate (especially given the equally insanely complicated packaging a lot of stuff you buy comes in). I contrast this with the system operating in Berlin, which is massively simpler and in which all packaging gets recycled. As usual, the British system is piecemeal, incomplete, inefficient, confusing and (no doubt) more expensive. Well done!

Did anyopne hear about that newsstory, that if binmen cant pull the bins with two fingers, they say its too heavy?

It's the same in Angus, pw: a green box for glass and plastic bottles, cans, magazines and newspapers, collected weekly by men with mini-skips on the back of a flatbed truck, items sorted as they go. Apart from that there's a green wheelie/y bin for compostables and a grey for all other household waste collected on alternate weeks. The local depot is at the top of the town, so about a mile from us: they take virtually everything recyclable: cardboard, clothes, cooking and engine oil, old white goods and small electrical items as well as general waste, but the accent is very much on recycling.

We have the weely bin fiasco! One week its landfill, next recycling. Not very good for the envoirement, I would say.

Our council is pretty good, and started ages ago.They come every 2 weeks and collect tins, paper,bottles,cardboard etc.

Jan is to be seen, come rain or shine, wheelbarrowing her 2 crates of empty (mainly beer) bottles and plastic stuff up the 1/2 mile of bumpy track to the lane where they collect!

I always do it the day before, as I'm not an early riser, and feel a tinge of embarrassment at just how many bottles are on display for the neighbours to spot as they whizz past in their 4x4 s !!

I tend to burn paper rubbish, and the only National newspaper we have on a Saturday is used to light the woodburner, so I dont make much else.

Our ordinary dustbin men come every week, but I only need to put the bin out every 2-3 weeks as we dont create much.


You are right, Mort, it ain't easy being green.

My idyllic environment is polluted by the sound and sight of wind turbines, producing electricity for some oik further down the county to waste watching TV, and leaving his standby on etc.... Grrrr!