Recycling. A good thing, but is this a step too far?

[mejinks]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6966580.stm

Where I live we pay the same amount of council tax, but to "encourage" more recycling, they have cut refuse collection to once every two weeks. During the summer this has led to plenty of complaints about rotting meat, veg etc making for very smelly bins.

The council have gone on record advising us to take excess or rotting rubbish to the local tip, they neglected to mention that they will soon start charging for bags taken to the tip.

So as per usual, we end up paying twice for half a service with a hairbrained scheme that we didn't vote for. When I lived in Cardiff, if you wanted to recycle, you had to pay £1 a bag and you couldn't put the bags out too early otherwise you would have the local council nazi fining you for dumping rubbish on the kerbside:(

Its all a bit too much really. I like the idea of recycling, but it should be up to the individual not enforced. Personally I like the idea of advisers, but having them come onto my property, looking through my bins is a step in the wrong direction tbh.

Discuss.

[Belmit]

We've had a fortnightly collection for years now. Admittedly the bins can start to smell bad if you don't bag it all up properly but overall it's been OK. Some weeks the recycle bin is fit to burst if we've broken up some cardboard boxes or something, but sometimes I don't even bother putting it out because it only has a couple of plastic bottles and a cereal packet in.

The biggest advance has been in the last month where they've given us a black plastic tub to put glass in, which is collected on the same day as the bin. Glass in my house by far outweighs all the other recyclables in both volume and weight, and it was often a chore to take bags full of bottles to the bottle bank (although I always did).

We seem to fill the main bin only once a fortnight anyway so I'm all for it. More than that would be a waste anyway.

[Treefrog]

Our local council has just this year started the brown bins for garden waste in my area. I generally get through about 1 kitchen binfull a week but I can refill the garden waste bin, which is bigger, the day after it's been collected :(

Solution: a neighbour has a large family and a small lawn. She uses the empty space in my household bin and I use the remainder of her brown bin.

[Flibster]

We have no recycling facilities at the flat. :(

We phoned the council - they said they had no plans for glass or paper/cardboard recycling, but, we could have a composter.

Great....

Simon/~Flibster

[Nutcase]

We have no recycling facilities at the flat. :(

We phoned the council - they said they had no plans for glass or paper/cardboard recycling, but, we could have a composter.

Great....

Simon/~Flibster

We have wheely bins for paper, clear glass, brown and green glass, and tins.

Nothing for cardboard and plastic bottles, which houses get. Not enough room apparently. Yet there's loads of room in the bin area for more!

[memphisto]

this along with many other things is just simply another form of a "moral" tax by the governemnt something which you cant really argue against as "were saving the environment" is quite hard statement to argue against.

BAsically ove rhte last 10-12 years labours tax take has gone up substantially mainly in the interests of improving public service (which hasnt happened) they have got o the point where people will not swallow that argument anymore, hence a massive change in focus towards the environment and environmental taxes.

At the end of the day I dont think it will make a slight bit of difference to the environemnt whether people will recycle or not but they way things are going it will make a massive difference to yer wallet.

[Muban]

Of course if they were really interested in the environment they could cut back the problem at the source. For companies who manage to reduce the amount of packaging they produce in the first place (and whose packaging could be made of recycleable materials) they could give them tax breaks. Of course this won't ever happen as the government wouldn't make any money out of that..

[Admiral Huddy]

Personally, I think that rather than targeting the household consumer, they should actually start looking the producers in the first place. As Muban says ;)

On shopping days, we turn out two carrier bags of rubbish just from packaging alone. Why can’t the producers and stores start looking at alternative packaging and refilling stations for sauces etc.. Start re-using coke bottles and, go back to using milk bottles etc. It makes more sense really.

Some of the packaging is disgraceful and in necessary to be honest

[Jonny69]

I agree with Huddy and Muban, the huge bulk of the rubbish we get through in our household is unavoidable because everything comes with so much packaging. There are two things you can do: unpack your stuff at the supermarket or shop and leave all the extra packaging behind and the other one is unpleasant but satisfying: flytipping.

[leowyatt]

Well to be honest we've actually stopped recycling our household waste collected by the council but stuff taken to the tip we do make the effort to recycle by sticking it in the correct skips.

We did this because there would be no pattern to their collections, even though they were supposed to be bi-weekly. They left our tin & bottle bin for 6 weeks during the hot summer then complained there were maggots in there and refused to collect it, so it all went in a black bin bag and went to the tip :angry:

[Admiral Huddy]

What really annoyed me recently is that the guys who collect the recycle stuff go through and remove anything that shouldn't be there. Some times it's just a mistake but there's no need to just dump it on my drive. Like for example, in the tins they don't like tin can lids.. so they tip them out on my drive.. Same for plastic bottle lids.. Leaving tin can tops on the floor can be quite hazardous.. I should mention it to the council really.

They are either doing this or not..

[leowyatt]

I really don't understand why they wouldn't take the lids, they need to recycle them after all :huh:

[Admiral Huddy]

Apparently not :dunno:

[Will]

As far as I'm concerned at the moment recycling hardly helps other than create jobs, cause more problems and if anything more pollution. A lot of reports state that only a small percentage is actually being recycled and an even smaller amount of waste is being pro-actively filtered for the good of the environment. At the moment as it stands, the richest countries in Europe do a lot of recycling - however the irony is that we create the smallest amount of pollution (for developed countries), compared to Asia (China in particular), and America for 2 main examples, though Africa and Middle Asia are big contributors.

Greenhouse gasses are to an extent natural anyway, I think it's just a cycle, yes we're probably not helping, but I don't think it's all doom and gloom as they say.

Until recycling processing is more efficient, and proper and effective renewable energy sources are used, or even nuclear power is used more efficiently there's pretty much sod all reasons in going bonkers on recycling. Other than paper, glass and tin cans, (of which only a proportion is recycled) the rest is merely procedural rather than anything else. It also gives people that feeling that they're doing something for the greater good - they're sheep and absorbed into the propaganda. Furthermore it gives the government/councils the opportunity to make some money.

Call me cynical if you want, but I've seen land fill sites and recycling centres - the proportion of the latter is slim and the proportion of recyclable materials supposedly filtered that end up in usual land fills is still so significant you can hardly tell the difference. I'm all for recycling and it's great - but until it's done properly in all countries there's very little need to make such a huge fuss over it.

[Jonny69]

They should burn all our waste and use it for heat recovery rather than sticking in a hole in the ground and allowing it to naturally turn in to methane and CO2. The amount of stuff I see in skips that is destined for landfill that could be fuelling someone's heating.

[Muban]

Also saw on the news about them wanting to chip your bin and then charge you for how much rubbish you dispose of. How exactly are they going to make this fair?

Today for example, I went out to my bin (around the back of the flats in the car park) only to find somone has put one full binbag and one full carrier bag into my bin. Also there is often other peoples rubbish in my bin as I live on the High Street and when I put my bin out all sorts of people use it (despite there being a proper bin less than 10ft away that gets emptied by the council daily). I leave for work at 7.15 and get home at 16:30 so there isn't much choice about when I put my bin out for collection either.

So between having my bin used as a communal bin by the public and my neighbours using it because theirs is full (and mine is never even close to being full). How are the goverment going to ensure that I am not unfairly taxed? Well of course the answer is they won't becuse they don't give a **** :angry:

[Treefrog]

Also saw on the news about them wanting to chip your bin and then charge you for how much rubbish you dispose of. How exactly are they going to make this fair?

Today for example, I went out to my bin (around the back of the flats in the car park) only to find somone has put one full binbag and one full carrier bag into my bin. Also there is often other peoples rubbish in my bin as I live on the High Street and when I put my bin out all sorts of people use it (despite there being a proper bin less than 10ft away that gets emptied by the council daily). I leave for work at 7.15 and get home at 16:30 so there isn't much choice about when I put my bin out for collection either.

So between having my bin used as a communal bin by the public and my neighbours using it because theirs is full (and mine is never even close to being full). How are the goverment going to ensure that I am not unfairly taxed? Well of course the answer is they won't becuse they don't give a **** :angry:

And I'll bet that the proportion of the council tax which pays for the collection won't change either, so you'll get charged twice for rubbish removal. and I'll also bet that single person households won't get a rebate for putting out less either.
Like you say, it will go on the weight of rubbish in there, not on whose rubbish it is.

Of course, if you disagree with the idea of chipping bins (will it unlock more power at higher revs, or enable your 'lost' bin to be reunited with you I wonder?) you can just kill the chip using a piezoelectric lighter. Not that I'd advocate such a naughty idea of course.